Our blessed Lord was indeed " a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."Rejoicing, as He did, in unhindered communion with His Father, and in the consciousness of ever and only seeking His glory ; happy, too, to find here and there a faith which could recognize Him in spite of the vail of humiliation upon Him – rejoicing as He did in these, it remains true that what gave character to His life was the dark side, the sins and sorrows which so thickly strewed His path – sins, it is needless to add, with which He had nothing to do, sorrows brought in by man alone. It is a wholesome exercise to dwell upon the sufferings of Christ, forgetting for the time our own, which are indeed eclipsed by His. He suffered because He was a perfect man, the only righteous One, in the midst of all manner of evil, selfishness, and worldliness. What pain, constant pain, it must have been to Him, only desiring to please His Father, to find all only desiring to please themselves, and His Father set aside completely; to meet with no desires above this earth, to find no thought of that heaven where all His thoughts were, – these things, to say nothing of the grosser forms of sin, nor of the sad witness of man's alienation from God in the manifold forms of disease and infirmity which oppressed the people, made the world to Him the valley of the shadow of death. We read that He sighed deeply, that He wept :ah ! well He knew the sad necessity for sighing and tears in a world like this. But in passing, it is precious to note that neither the sorrows of earth nor its sins drove Him from it. At any moment He could have ascended up to where He was before, but no Such thought occurs to Him. The very sorrows, the very sins, were links which held Him here until He had accomplished that which would bring forgiveness and deliverance as regards the sin, and joy in place of the sorrow. So far, we have been speaking of the sufferings of our Lord from the mere fact that He was in a world like ours. His holy nature shrank from contact with its surroundings. But though exquisitely sensitive, He was no weakling to run away from conflict. He was here as the light to manifest the works of darkness, as the righteous One to reprove all unrighteousness, and the world hated Him for the testimony He bore, it persecuted Him as Cain did his brother Abel. At Nazareth, they sought to cast Him down from the brow of the hill because He bore witness to God's grace, and intimated that as they would not receive it, it would be presented to the Gentiles; His most wonderful miracles and His most striking teachings, (if we may so speak when all was divinely perfect and in its place absolutely the best to be done or said,) alike provoked enmity, hatred, persecution even unto death. For one view of the cross shows us man's hatred of God's Son. At last, when nailed there and lifted up from the earth, hatred had its full way. But what suffering all this entailed upon Him! Looked upon with suspicion, His words perverted, His life sought,-such was His pathway here, a pathway leading on, through ever-deepening gloom, to the culmination, when, delivered by His own people into the hands of the Gentiles, He was by them crucified and slain.

When we remember who He was-the Anointed of God, the Messiah, with special promises as the head of the Jewish nation ; when we see Him associating Himself with His people in their circumstances, and desiring, as only He could desire, their blessing and their glory, to find them unwilling to be blessed, unwilling to receive Him who came in the name of Jehovah, we can understand that outburst of sorrow, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! " the same sorrow which led Him later, as He beheld the beloved city, to weep over it. This hardened state of the nation He well knew would be sure to bring upon them judgment from God, and would necessitate His own cutting off as Messiah, This must have been an added ingredient of bitterness in His cup of sorrow and suffering, which, present all through His public ministry, was intensified in the garden of Gethsemane when His soul was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," and He sweat as it were great drops of blood. Here He doubtless was realizing that every earthly prospect was to be sacrificed, and that as Shepherd of Israel He was to be smitten and the sheep scattered. But the shadow of a darker suffering, anguish more awful, was there pressing on Him. He was, in anticipation, entering into the sufferings of the cross, and His holy soul shrank in unutterable horror from the awful prospect.

The sufferings of Christ of which we have been speak-were not atoning. The direct question of sin and its penalty had not been entered into until the darkness which settled down on Calvary left Him alone to bear the full load of judgment, to drink to the last drop the cup of wrath which we deserved, and to accomplish eternal redemption for His people. We are here on most holy ground :reverence is most becoming; but for God's glory, for our own deeper acquaintance with our blessed Lord, let us pause and dwell upon this awful scene. The darkness about Him was but the fitting accompaniment of that more terrible darkness which pressed upon His soul when God withdrew His presence from Him. "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?" No answer, no help, no succor. He was made sin, though He knew no sin, and treated with that wrath deserved by the ungodly. It was not now a question of man's hatred, or Satan's either :what were they compared with the wrath of God, all the waves and billows going over His head ? Well may we wonder and adore.

But this brings us back to our subject. We have been seeing somewhat what the afflictions of Christ were ; and is not the question a natural one-Can there be any more of those afflictions? Did not He exhaust them all ? The scripture before us tells us that the apostle was filling up that which was behind, was still lacking in the sufferings of Christ. As to atonement, it is only blasphemy to hint that all was not completed when our blessed Lord finished the work on the cross, and was raised in token of God's acceptance of the sacrifice for sin. As to His sorrows as Messiah, and in anticipation of the cross, those were personal to Himself, though in some measure understood by him who once wished himself accursed from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh (Rom. 9:3), and by all who know what the fear of wrath is. As to His sufferings for righteousness, all who will live godly in Christ Jesus will taste of that cup. "If they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you." But the afflictions alluded to here are specially for the Church, and in a peculiar way the apostle Paul filled up those sufferings. For as long as the Church is on earth, there is an opportunity for suffering-a necessity. Let us read a catalogue of some of those afflictions which the apostle went through for the sake of the Church :-

"Of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep ; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils by the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?" (2 Cor. 11:24-29.)

What anguish there was in connection with the case of discipline at Corinth !The rod with which he smote them, he felt upon himself; sorrow, tears, fears, showed how great was his anxiety, how real his suffering. In difference to their welfare, to Christ's glory, might have spared him much pain, but he did not choose the easy path. He was here for the Church, and so ready to suffer for it. When the fundamental truth of justification by faith was in danger among the assemblies of Galatia, he lets us see; in the epistle he wrote them, the deep sorrow of soul through which he passed. " My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you."What love he had for that Church which had been purchased with the precious blood of Christ! In his measure, he would take up the work where his Master laid it down, and enter upon that path of unrequited love, for the sake of the Church. Our Lord can no longer suffer though He can sympathize with His people, and intercede for them in their constant needs; still He loves them with the same unchangeable love which led Him to the cross for them. Well, then, are the sorrows undergone for the welfare of that Church called " the afflictions of Christ."Does He not Himself say, "Why persecutest thou Me?"How edifying it is to see this devoted servant thus suffering for his Lord's Church. We know him as a man of wonderful gift, inspired to present us some of the richest and most important portions of the Word of God; we know him as successful in a marvelous degree, but let us remember him as one who rejoiced to suffer for the Church,-who appreciated the dignity of bearing a part in what he by inspiration calls " the afflictions of Christ."This very epistle to the Colossians, as well as others, was written from prison ; and one of its touching sentences at the close is, "Remember my bonds."

And now the question comes nearer home, and we are compelled to ask, if our blessed Lord, after enduring all that fitted us for eternal glory, still left a heritage of suffering for His servant, does there yet remain any thing which can be spoken of as that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ? The question can be answered by another:Is the Church still on earth? and has it needs, sorrows, and failures to be noted and met by us? Then, as long as this is the case, so long will there be something that is behind of the afflictions of Christ, for His body's sake, which is the Church. Let us, then, for our own consciences, see some of these needs, and where, it may be, we too, in our little measure, can be associated with the Great Sufferer.

Here is moral evil in the assembly; alas! that such a thing should be. It is not enough that we should judge it and put away the evil person. What about the confession of it, the bitter sorrow, the earnest prayer for the restoration of the wanderer ? But apart from that which requires extreme dealing, there is a vast mass of what needs correction if we are able to reach those affected. Just here do we need to learn how to suffer for the Church. How often do we allow personal prejudice or wounded feelings to rule us ! A brother has gone wrong, but he has misrepresented us, wounded us, and, lo ! we forget that he is a member of the body of Christ, and render ourselves utterly unfit to help him because of our personal relation to the trouble. Ah ! if we mourned over him,-if we felt in our soul how he had dishonored his and our Lord,-if we dropped the question of our rights, how soon would our sorrow melt him, and that hardness, which is visible enough, melt into grief and tenderness ! Let us remember that servant who had been forgiven a great debt, and who went out and took by the throat his fellow, demanding full payment of a small claim. In the light of our forgiveness, by God of that great debt, are we going to exact full penalty for every offense? How much more becoming, how much more like our Lord, did we mourn over the wrong-really suffer about it as an injury to the Church of Christ! Did we carry these things with real sorrow to our God, what help there would be!

If this spirit always animated us, we would not err so frequently on the side of legality. "The letter killeth;" and we can no more enforce the letter of some direction in the epistles, if we do it in a legal way, than we could an ordinance from Leviticus. There must be heart work in all these things, or our very righteousness will lead us astray. We are under grace, not only as before God, but in all the relationships of life. That grace is to characterize all our action, and no where more than in the assembly of God. How much friction might be avoided, and hopeless entanglements escaped, did we act on the principle of grace, and instead of maintaining our righteous opinions as judges, be real sufferers for Christ's body. But you will be misrepresented, misunderstood ; be it so; suffer that, if thereby you save further wandering in some sheep of Christ,-if you thereby heal a breach which otherwise might widen. Let the legend of the Roman patriot, who would close a chasm by leaping into it, find a truthful illustration by our sinking self and being healers of breaches, not makers of them. Oh, what matters it whether or not we are thought well of, if only we help the Church ?

But it may be asked, How are we to do this ? Is righteous principle to be sacrificed, or evil to be winked at ? Without attempting to answer definitely, we can only point to our verse and say, Seek to carry that out. Endure sorrow, bear pain for the sorrows of the Church, get into that state of soul, and then you will be able-not till then-to see what is righteousness and what is self-will.

Apply this truth to the too prevalent habit of criticism. It is easy to find faults. Alas ! there are too many in us all, and it needs no great discernment to detect them. But where is the benefit? Is criticism helping to fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ ? Can we conceive of Him indulging such a spirit? There is nothing which so enfeebles the soul, and unfits for all helpful dealing with our brother, as this practice. Let us be mourners, not critics, and we will find that thus we will be helping saints, not contributing to the general confusion about us.

Notice, too, that in this we have the common privilege of all saints. No gift is needed to sorrow over evil,-no eloquence, no prominence. The obscurest brother, the weakest sister, have here a place from which none can thrust them but themselves. In times of special trial and distraction, when all seems to be in confusion, if there are sufferers,-those who feel, not anger or excitement or resentment, but grief at the injury done to the feeble flock of Christ, we have in that very fact a promise of recovery and blessing. What a name to give to the troubles and sorrows of the Church-"the afflictions of Christ" ! and what a privilege, what a dignity, to be called on to suffer for His sake ! To think of any little self-denial, any sinking of our own wishes, any enduring in silence, as being placed along-side the griefs of the Man of Sorrows ! Let us dwell upon His woes; and as our hearts are melted by their contemplation, let us anew seek to imitate Him " who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not."