Father would glorify Him. How all this, beloved friends, rebukes the Church of Christ! To be anointed is to have the very place which Jesus had before God, and to know that, as the Spirit anointed Him, so that Spirit anoints us; and then what a lesson we seem to learn from this !-that lesson of patient waiting upon God, that unwillingness to go forward, except as He guides and directs and points the way. Oh, how often, beloved, we are running before Him, and how often are we lagging behind Him! How often receiving honour one of another! Jesus spoke the word to the Pharisees, beloved: might He not speak it to His Church? Might He not sometimes say to you and me, "Ye receive honour one of another"? Oh, that we might be more like Jesus! Oh, that we might have that same anointing upon us! And then, dear friends, when the way is once before us, may we be like Jesus-ready to go, as did the servant Isaiah, with our eye upon the Master: "Here am I; send me!" Oh for that self-emptiness which would seem to allow a place for God to fill in us! Oh for that power to lay aside all power, and look up and wait for His strength! But, friends, are not we following Him at a great distance, often making our own plans, and in our own strength, and then turning to our fellow-men to hold up our arms, and then last of all perhaps coming and saying, Lord, bless my plan? Oh for grace to wait, as the Lord Himself waited, that the light might come from heaven upon our soul, and the strength from God nerve us for the work to which He seems to call us!

And then, beloved, it would seem that, as we should carry Jesus with us, we should carry more sympathy with us down into this poor sin-blighted world. What a gap there was between Jesus and that poor woman mentioned in the 8th of John! And yet how He seemed to come down unto her very necessity! How He seemed to compassionate her, even when He did not forgive her! How He seemed to wait until the way was made plain that He could stand up and say, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more!" And then, dear friends, more still. How He came down into the heart of that poor penitent as she loosened her hair, and washed His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and, oh! how He seemed to share in her very joy as He bid her go in peace! And methinks, dear brethren, dear sisters in the Lord, that that sympathy which Jesus had so marvellously—oh, if we could only share it a little, it would tell wondrously on those with whom we have to do. I find it carried great confidence to the hearts of His people. I find that the same disciples who, in the midst of the storm, trembled and cried with fear, because a spirit-one from the other world-seemed to them to walk upon the sea, the moment they heard the voice, and knew that it was Jesus, their confidence, their comfort returned. And it was just so again when, after His resurrection, they trembled in that upper room, not knowing what was coming, when they saw one suddenly in their midst whom they knew not. But then His old sympathy showed itself, and their old love and confidence came out, as they handled

those hands, and as they touched or looked at those feet, and as they saw that it was Christ. And methinks, beloved in the Lord Jesus, we have something to do in this poor world very like the work of Jesus. We want to go down into the miseries that surround us. We cannot do it except as we carry Jesus with us. You and I cannot feel, we cannot realise the wants, we cannot sympathise with the sorrows of those around us, except just so far as we are in communion with Jesus Himself. Then I notice how active the compassion of our Master was. How He was always entering into the feelings of those-whatever those feelings were with whom He had to do! What a wonderful fellow-mourner He was, as He joined that company where Lazarus' grave was! How he groaned in spirit! How He wept! So again, in the 10th of Luke, how He rejoiced with them that did rejoice, when the seventy came back to Him with their own joy, exclaiming, "The spirits are subject unto us!" Jesus deepened their joy, led it to the right direction; but, a verse or two lower down, "Jesus rejoiced in spirit." It was an active sympathy, beloved. There was a meaning in those words on the lips of Jesus, that they never have on our lips-"I have compassion, I have compassion on the multitude;" for immediately He took the barley-loaves and the few small fishes, and looking up He blessed them and sent them forth, and the multitude were filled. I ask the Church of God whether we can do that; and I say that, in our measure, we can. I say that, as we bring our poor feeble talents, our poor weakness, our little power, all

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that is represented in those loaves and those fishes, and just place it before the Master, carry it first to the hand of Jesus, take it blessed from the hand of Jesus, I think we shall have that compassion on the multitude, and such blessing following our efforts that they shall all be filled.

Now once more, beloved, and then other brethren, God willing, will take up the subject more fully. I want just to notice how we are to be like the Anointed One in the realisation of His hope. Oh those words in the 12th of Hebrews, when the Apostle would gird the loins that were getting weak, and strengthen the knees that were beginning to shake! "Looking off," he says, "unto Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross." How the apostle links us with Jesus, and bids us remember what it was which sustained the Master, so that the same glorious hope may sustain the Church! Are we, beloved, as the anointed in Christ, looking for that joy? I ask you whether we are really living in the power of that blessed hope; and if not, God grant that from this day we may have learned, as we have looked at Jesus, what it is to joy in hope of the glory of God. The Master has sat down on His throne; He has overcome, and He is on His Father's throne; and He turns to you and me, and says, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne." Oh, beloved, may that joy set before us, that prospect of sharing His throne, help us, in His strength, to overcome the world! Have we overcome the world, or have we not rather failed to overcome the world?

Is it not because we are not looking for, hastening unto, possessed with the hope of the return of Jesus?

Again, in the 14th of John, the Master is near His end. He is moving onward to the Kingdom, but oh ! how He unites His disciples with Him in the prospect that is before Him. "I go," He says, "I go." How His heart bounded with joy as the course was nearly run, and He was about to go. "I go," He said, "to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also." Then in that great prayer in the 17th of John, I mark three special petitions addressed by Him who was sent, to the Father that sent Him. Speaking of those in the world as those whom He had now sent to take His place, what are His three prayers? First :— Glorify Thy Son." He was near the glory; he would soon be in the midst of it again, the glory which He had had from the foundation of the world! But then there were those left behind, and He prays, "Keep them, keep them." Then the third prayer was, "I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory."

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Dear brethren and sisters in the Lord Christ, may these few words of exposition be enough, through the Almighty Spirit, to bring you and me more into fellowship with Him that hath been sent, that we may have more of His anointing, more of His Spirit, more of His patience, for Christ's sake. Amen.