I shall quote a passage for my reader, illustrative of that character of suffering to which we are now referring.--"When the even was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils; and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, '_Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses_.'" (Matt. viii. 16, 17.) This was entirely sympathetic--the power of fellow-feeling, which in Him was perfect. He had no sicknesses or infirmities of His own. Those things which are sometimes spoken of as "sinless infirmities," were, in His case, but the evidences of a veritable, a real, a perfect manhood. But by sympathy--by perfect fellow-feeling, "He _took_ our infirmities, and _bare_ our sicknesses." None but a perfect man could have done this. We may feel for and with each other, but only Jesus could make human infirmity and sickness His own. Now, had He been bearing all these things by the necessity of His birth, or of His relations with Israel and the human family, we should have lost all the beauty and preciousness of His voluntary sympathy. There could be no room for voluntary action when absolute necessity was laid upon Him. But, on the other hand, when we see His entire freedom, both personally and relatively, from human misery and that which produced it, we can enter into that perfect grace and compassion which led Him to "take our infirmities, and bear our sicknesses," in the power of true sympathy. There is, therefore, a very manifest difference between Christ's suffering as a voluntary sympathizer with human misery, and His sufferings as the sinner's substitute. The former are apparent throughout His entire _life_; the latter are confined to His _death_.