EVERY Christian should feel that Jesus is a present Saviour—a Saviour who enters into all our sufferings, and sympathizes with all our efforts to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil. Spurgeon, in his usual forcible way, says:— “It is because of our attenuating, vaporizing, and spiriting, our Lord away, and making him into a myth so often, instead of gripping him with a common-place, practical, firm, realizing faith, that we suffer so much from our troubles. For, brethren, it is a sad cause of trouble to have a phantom Redeemer, a Saviour who gives us only a little indefinite hope about our guilt, but does not literally put it away. This is the seed-bed of all manner of evil weeds. I do not wonder if you are vexed with doubts and fears if you have not realized Christ. Beware, my brethren, of resting with anything short of faith in an actual, literal, living Mediator, for nothing but reality will be of any use to you in the matter. Of course, with a phantom Saviour for real sins, an apparition of a Redeemer for real bondage, you cannot find comfort. Of what use is the appearance of bread and the resemblance of water, to famishing pilgrims in the desert? If you have a phantom helper for real woes, you are the worse for such help. If your Saviour does not actually and practically support you in times of need, and supply your wants and console you under depression, then in what respects are you better off than those who have no helper at all? Jesus is a friend indeed. His grace, love, and presence, are no fictions; of all facts they are the most sure. If I have to carry a real load, and then have a shadow to assist me, I am in truth unassisted. We want true power, force, and energy in our helper, and all that faith sees in Jesus the Lord; but you will readily see how sorrows multiply where Jesus is lightly esteemed.” Many a poor sinner even imagines Jesus to be an angry spirit, and he cries out for fear. He imagines that Jesus is wrathful and will reject him with indignation. Ah! thou dost not truly realize my Saviour if thou thinkest he would ever reject any one who came to him. When on earth what a physician of souls he was! he mingled with publicans and sinners: he did not talk about them as people having to be looked after, but he actually went after them himself, and suffered one of them to wash his feet with her tears, and wipe them with the hairs of her head. He was wont to touch diseased sinners with his finger as he healed them. He was not a dilettante Saviour; he did not come into this world to save us from supposititious sin and imaginary trouble. There is nothing which is more overlooked, but which ought to be better remarked, about our Lord than his common-sense practicalness. He is utterly devoid of sham and pretence. He is always in the gospel history as real as the scenes of life around him; he never strikes you as theatrical and pretentious. May we all feel that he is really a loving Saviour, a tender Saviour, and a practical Saviour to us. May you know him, may you realize him, and then your sorrows will either come to an end, or be accepted with thanksgiving.—Sel.