"This man receives sinners!"

(Winslow, "A Word in Season from Christ to the Weary")

The beings whom Jesus sought
out and drew around Him, were....
  the burdened,
  the bowed down,
  the disconsolate,
  the poor,
  the friendless,
  the helpless,
  the ignorant,
  the weary.

He loved to lavish upon such, the fulness of His
benevolent heart, and to exert upon such, the
skill of His wonder working power.

Earth's weary sons repaired to His out stretched
arms for shelter, and the world's ignorant and
despised clustered around His feet, to be taught
and blessed.

Sinners of every character, and the disconsolate
of every grade, attracted by His renown, pressed
upon Him from every side.

"This man receives sinners!" was the name and
the character by which He was known. It was new
and strange. Uttered by the lip of the proud and
disdainful Pharisee, it was an epithet of reproach
and an expression of ridicule. But upon the ear of
the poor and wretched outcast, the sons and
daughters of sorrow, ignorance, and woe, it fell
sweeter than the music of the spheres.

It passed from lip to lip; it echoed from shore to shore:
"This man receives sinners!" It found its way into the
abodes of misery and need; it penetrated the dungeon
of the prisoner, and the cell of the maniac; and it
kindled an unearthly light in the solitary dwelling of the
widow and the orphan, the unpitied and the friendless.

Thus received its accomplishment, the prophecy that
predicted Him as the "Plant of renown," whom Jehovah
would raise up. Thousands came, faint, and weary, and
sad, and sat down beneath His shadow; and thousands
more since then have pressed to their wounded hearts
the balsam that flowed from His bleeding body, and
have been healed!

"This man receives sinners!"

Take your guilt to His blood.

Take your vileness to His righteousness.

Take your sins to His grace.

Take your burdens to His arm.

Take your sorrows to His heart.

"This man receives sinners!"