My Dear—-,-To take into one's own soul the sorrows,
and the roots of them in sin of others, was what the blessed Lord did perfectly, and could do it perfectly because there was no sin in Him; to do so is ours most surely, however imperfectly we may succeed in doing it, and the whole of Scripture shows me that it is one part of the servant of God's calling. See chap. 9, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Ezekiel. I see the same in John 11, when I judge the Lord's sorrow was from His taking death in what it meant, into His soul, and not from the weakness of human sympathy with Martha and Mary.
What a comfort it is to have the Lord's bosom opened to us, and drawing nigh to it to find the character of view that He might never have to forsake us.
But, besides the fact that then and there He was forsaken in our stead (and so our guilt is gone, gone forever from us in God's presence), what a revelation is that sorrow to us both of His competency to enter into our sorrows when alone and left of all; but, too, of what alas! is terrible to flesh and blood, His purpose to perfect, and His pathway of perfecting, our hearts in practical Nazariteship. Paul in his letter, 2nd to Timothy, shows and the two sets of beings who lived in them, how differently! Then again, to His mind, there is the case of the soul that fails and sins. Peter's ignorant self-confidence in John 13 must be judged; and if he and David before him could not read self in the light of God, self must be left to work out its characteristics in outside things, which angels, and wicked men, and good men could all read plainly now; and so both Peter and David are brought with Job, and all others, to abhor and loathe themselves before God,' and (the evil thus judged by self) room be made for the development of the new principles, and that which is acceptable to God in us worked out in us by Him. Remind you of 1 John 2 and 3 first verses, of the reality that the living Christ of God is ever ready; and the close of Heb. 4 shows us this to put forth His help. I commend you to God and the word of His grace.
I am, yours ever, G. V. W.