Here is a little story, very simple, and homely; but yet, one that illustrates very well the point of which we are speaking. It is a story about:
"A Lost Horse Found." A valuable horse was lost, belonging to a farmer in New England. A number of his neighbors turned out to try and find the horse. They searched all through the woods and fields of the surrounding country, but in vain. None of them could find the horse. At last a poor, weak-minded fellow, who was known in that neighborhood as "simple Sam," started to hunt the horse. After awhile he came back, bringing the stray horse with him. The owner of the horse was delighted to see him. He stroked and patted him, and then, turning to the simple-minded man who had found him, he said:
"Well, Sam, how came you to find the horse, when no one else could do it?"
"Wal, you see," said Sam, "I just 'quired whar the horse was seen last; and then I went thar, and sat on a rock; and just axed mysel', if I was a horse, whar would I go, and what would I do? And then I went, and found him." Now, when Sam, in the simplicity of his feeble mind, tried to put himself, as far as he could, in the horse's place, this helped him to find the lost horse, and bring him back to his owner again. And so, to pass from a very little thing to a very great one, when Jesus came down from heaven to seek and to save sinners that were lost, this is just the way in which he acted. He put himself in our place as sinners. As the apostle Paul says: "he who knew no sin, was made sin for us," that he might save us from the dreadful consequences of our sins.
And we see the tenderness of Jesus, not only in taking our nature upon him and becoming man, but in what he did when he lived in this world as a man. "He went about doing good." It was his great tenderness that led him to do this. Suppose that you and I could have walked about with Jesus when he was on earth as the apostles did. Just think for a moment what we should have seen. We should have seen him meeting with blind men and opening their eyes that they might see. We should have seen him meeting with deaf men, and unstopping their ears that they might hear. We should have seen him meeting sick people who were taken with divers diseases and torments and healing them. We should have seen him raising the dead; and casting out devils; and speaking words of comfort and encouragement to those who were sad and sorrowful. If we could have looked into his blessed face, we should have seen tenderness there, beaming from his eyes and speaking from every line of his countenance. If we could have listened to his teaching we should have found tenderness running through all that he said. Just take one of his many parables as a sample of his way of teaching—the parable of the lost sheep—and see how full of tenderness it is. The sweet lines of the hymn, about the shepherd seeking his lost sheep, that most of us love to sing, bring out the tenderness of Jesus here very touchingly.
"There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold—
Away on the mountains, wild and bare,