A brother rises in prayer-meeting to lead in supplication.  After he has begun, the door slams, and you peep through your fingers to see who is coming in.  You say to yourself, “What a finely expressed prayer, or what a blundering specimen!  But how long he keeps on!  Wish he would stop!  He prays for the world’s conversion.  I wonder how much he gives toward it?  There!  I don’t think I turned the gas down in the parlor!  Wonder if Bridget has got home yet?  Wonder if they have thought to take that cake out of the oven?  Oh what a fool I was to put my name on the back of that note!  Ought to have sold those goods for cash and not on credit!” And so you go on tumbling over one thing after another until the gentleman closes his prayer with Amen! and you lift up your head, saying, “There!  I haven’t prayed one bit.  I am not a Christian!” Yes, you are, if you have resisted the tendency.  Christ knows how much you have resisted, and how thoroughly we are disordered of sin, and He will pick out the one earnest petition from the rubbish and answer it.  To the very depth of His nature He sympathizes with the infirmity of our prayers.

He is touched with the infirmity of our temper.

There are some who, notwithstanding all that is said or done to them can smile back.  But many of you are so constructed that if a man insults you, you either knock him down or wish you could.  While with all resolution and prayer you resist this, remember that Christ knows how much you have been lied about, and misrepresented, and trod on.  He knows that though you said something that was hot, you kept back something that was ten times hotter.  He takes into account your explosive temperament.  He knows that it requires more skill to drive a fiery span than a tame roadster.  He knows how hard you have put down the “brakes” and is touched with the feeling of your infirmity.

Christ also sympathizes with our poor efforts at doing good.

Our work does not seem to amount to much.  We teach a class, or distribute a bundle of tracts, or preach a sermon, and we say, “Oh, if I had done it some other way!” Christ will make no record of our bungling way, if we did the best we could.  He will make record of our intention and the earnestness of our attempt.  We cannot get the attention of our class, or we break down in our exhortation, or our sermon falls dead, and we go home disgusted, and sorry we tried to speak, and feel Christ is afar off.  Why, He is nearer than if we had succeeded, for He knows that we need sympathy, and is touched with our infirmity.

It is comforting to know that it is not the learned and the great and the eloquent that Christ seems to stand closest by.  The “Swamp-angel” was a big gun, and made a stunning noise, but it burst before it accomplished anything, while many an humble rifle helped decide the contest.  Christ made salve out of spittle to cure a blind man, and the humblest instrumentality may, under God, cure the blindness of the soul.  Blessed be God for the comfort of His gospel!