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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted."- Psalms 22:24.
This is said with reference to the allegations of the men who stood around the cross of Christ. They affirmed that God evidently despised the sufferer, and so far from sympathizing with him in his affliction, abhorred him as a deceiver, and was glad to have men execute their indignation with unchastened severity. "It is beyond all question," said they, " that the Lord is against him. He has delivered him into our hands, notwithstanding all the reluctance of Pilate and the attachment of his disciples ’, and in every way is aiding us to fill the cup of his anguish and to pour contempt upon him. The Lord himself is smiting him; and we are simply falling in with the current of his providences."
Often, most often, the same language has been used by the persecutors of Christ’s people. They have averred that God was delivering these into their hands to be tormented, imprisoned, defamed, and burnt. God brought forth in due time the evidence that he had not despised nor abhorred the affliction of that afflicted one. There was evidence abundant in the character, the words, and works of Christ that God could not be indifferent to his sufferings; but a carnal world could not see this evidence. By the resurrection of Jesus, the baptism of the Apostles, the love of the Church, and the spread of the Gospel, evidence of an imposing kind has been given The experience of every sinner that believes on Christ, from its beginning onward through eternity, teems with evidence that the Father sympathized with the sufferer of Calvary. Every instance of a fulfilled promise, repeats this evidence.
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