"He is King of the poor...His tenderness is almighty..."

In all their affliction He was afflicted,

And the Angel of His Presence saved them;

In His love and in His pity He redeemed them;

And He bore them and carried them

All the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:15-16

         Believing in Jesus, we can travel on, through one wild parish after another, upon English soil, and see, as I have done, the labourer who tills the land worse housed than the horse he drives, worse clothed than the sheep he shears, worse nourished that the hog he feeds—and yet not despair; for the Prince of sufferers is the labourer’s Saviour; He has tasted hunger, and thirst, and weariness, poverty, oppression, and neglect; the very tramp who wanders houseless on the moorside is His brother; in his sufferings the Saviour of the world has shared, when the foxes had holes, and the birds of the air had nests, while the Son of God had not where to lay His head. He is the King of the poor, first-born among many brethren; His tenderness is almighty, and for the poor He has prepared deliverance, perhaps in this world, surely in the world to come ~boundless deliverance, out of the treasures of His boundless love.

         Oh, sad hearts and suffering! Anxious and weary ones! Look to the Cross. There hung your King! The King of sorrowing souls, and more, the King of sorrows. Ay, pain and grief, tyranny and desertion, death and hell, He has face them one and all, and tried their strength, and taught them His, and conquered them right royally! And, since He hung upon that torturing Cross, sorrow is divine, Godlike, as joy itself. All that man’s fallen nature dreads and despises, God honoured on the Cross, and took unto Himself, and blest and consecrated forever…. Blessed are wisdom and courage, and health and beauty, love and marriage, childhood and manhood, corn and wine, fruits and flowers, for Christ redeemed them by His life. And blessed, too, are tears and shame, blessed are weakness and ugliness, blessed are agony and sickness, blessed the sad remembrance of our sins, and a broken heart, and a repentant spirit. Blessed is death, and blest the unknown realms, where souls await the resurrection day, for Christ redeemed them by His death. Blessed are all things, weak as well as strong…for all are His, and He is ours; and all are ours, and we are His forever.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy Maker is not by:

Think not thou canst weep a tear,

And thy Maker is not near.

Oh, He gives to us His joy,

That our grief He may destroy:

Till our grief is fled and gone

He doth sit by us and moan.

         Outside Holy Scripture there has not been a more intimate apprehension of the fellow-suffering of God than these words of Blake—

He doth sit by us and moan.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

~National Sermons