And shall I be afraid of a world already conquered? The Almighty Victor, within view of His Crown, turns round to His faint and weary soldiers, and bids them take courage. They are not fighting their way through untried enemies. The God-Man Mediator "_knows_ their sorrows." "He was in _all points_ tempted." "Both He (_i. e._, Christ) who sanctifieth, and they (His people) who are sanctified, are all of one (nature)." As the great Precursor, he heads the pilgrim band, saying "I will show you the path of life." The way to heaven is consecrated by His footprints. Every thorn that wounds _them_, has wounded _Him_ before. Every cross they can bear, he has borne before. Every tear they shed, He has shed before. There is one respect, indeed, in which the identity fails,--He was "yet without sin;" but this recoil of His Holy nature from moral evil gives Him a deeper and intenser sensibility towards those who have still corruption within responding to temptation without. Reader! are you ready to faint under your tribulations? Is it a seducing world--a wandering, wayward heart? "Consider _Him_ that endured!" Listen to your adorable Redeemer, stooping from His Throne, and saying, "_I_ have overcome the world." He came forth unscathed from its snares. With the same heavenly weapon He bids you wield, three times did he repel the Tempter, saying, "It is written."--Is it some crushing trial, or overwhelming grief? He is "_acquainted_ with _grief_." He, the mighty Vine, knows the minutest fibres of sorrow in the branches; when the pruning knife touches _them_, it touches _Him_. "He has gone," says a tried sufferer, "through every class in our wilderness school." He loves to bring His people into untried and perplexing places, that they may seek out the guiding pillar, and prize its radiance. He puts them on the darkening waves, that they may follow the guiding light hung out astern from the only Bark of pure and unsullied Humanity that was ever proof against the storm. Be assured there is disguised love in all He does. He who knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves, often puts a thorn in our nest to drive us to the wing, that we may not be grovellers forever. "It is," says Evans, "upon the smooth ice we slip, the rough path is safest for the feet." The tearless and undimmed eye is not to be coveted _here_; _that_ is reserved for heaven!