“Christian love can do something which nothing else in the world can do; 

it can repeat the incarnation of the Master. 

Paul says that Christ took “the likeness of sinful flesh” – put Himself in the circumstances of those who have gone astray. 

Every Christian is, in this respect, made to follow Christ.

 

He has to cast himself down into his brother’s environment; 

to feel his weakness, 

to experience his helplessness, 

to measure the strength of his temptations. 

He has to cast himself down into the stream of his brother’s heredity, 

To learn the power of long seated corruption,

To estimate the force of an impure fountain. 

That is why Christian love is not easily provoked. 

Before it sees the fault, it feels the frailty. 

Before it marks the waste, it measures the wave;

Before it apportions the blame, it allows for the influence of ancestral blood.

 

Oh God, give me a sense that the flesh is weak and the burden strong,

That the will is wayward and the temptation keen,

That the ship is small and the sea tempestuous!

 

Let me live in the heart of the humble;

Let me dwell in the soul of the sightless; 

Let me walk in the lair of the leper;

Let me tread in the den of the demoniac;

Let me consider the friendlessness of the fallen before they fell! 

Then shall I bear on my breast the world’s sin; then shall my spirit be provoked no more.” 

George Matheson.