Samuel Ridout

What a comfort it is in the midst of the trials of the way to know that we have a sympathetic High Priest! Oftentimes we may go to one another with our trials and we meet each other with a certain measure of sympathy: "A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." But how incomplete is the sympathy of the dearest friend that you may have! There are experiences, there is a sense of weakness, there are needs which you are either ashamed to speak of or realize the uselessness of telling the dearest earthly friend about. How blessed it is to know that there is not an atom of experience we may have that is beneath the notice of our blessed High Priest! There is not a trial, so small that you might be ashamed to speak of it to man, that you cannot tell out in His sympathetic ear. He was tried as we are — for that is what has given Him capacity to be a merciful High Priest! He has passed through our experiences; it is not merely One who has divine knowledge of our path — God has that: "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me," says the psalmist, then Thou knewest my path." God knows the path of His people. He knew the sorrows of Israel down in Egypt; but, beloved, with our blessed Lord it is something more than divine knowledge of the sorrows and needs of His people; it is divine experience of those sorrows and needs.