To be told he must not use his normal liberty, must not eat his usual meal or drink his usual cup of wine, because it might scandalize some Christian with the ascetic prejudices of an Essene, or even induce him to do the same against his own conscience--to be told this was annoying to a man who held the 'strong' Christian conviction that all kinds of food were indifferently allowable. The weak scruple of his brother Christian had become an annoying burden of self-denial and self-restraint laid on himself. But this, St. Paul says, is how Christian strength--whether it be the moral strength of clear convictions, or any other sort of faculty[1]--must show itself, in readiness to suffer on account of other people's deficiencies, in not resenting the restraints they lay on us, in not expecting to do as we please, but being {161} ready to accommodate ourselves to our neighbour's tastes where it is for his good. That is what our great example did. Plainly His whole human life was putting Himself under the restraints which our weaknesses and narrownesses and slownesses laid on Him. The righteous man in the psalm complains that he has to bear all the reproaches of God which impatient and rebellious Israelites might utter; and that is the picture of Christ bearing our infirmities. (The reproaches which fell on Him were for the very largeness of His love; 'because He received sinners,' and because He received them on the Sabbaths as well as on other days. They were reproaches of God, like Jonah's, because He was too forbearing, too generous.) Then St. Paul pauses a moment to justify his use of the Psalms. These ancient scriptures did not fulfil their purpose in their own time, or for the old covenant. God intended them for Christians. Their teaching is what they need. The burdens of life are so many, its requirements upon their patience so constant, that they find it hard to maintain their hope. Yet what is the Old Testament so full of? Lessons of endurance and words of encouragement. The encouragement and endurance then, which they gain from {162} the Old Testament, are to help them to maintain Christian hope. They must not lose heart. The end is a great one: it is the maintenance of a united spirit in the Church, such as Christ can approve, such as can express itself in a really unanimous adoration of Him whom Christ recognized as His God and Father. May the God who inspires endurance and encouragement, grant them not to fail in this great end!