being who appears as a God of love to the righteous appears to the wicked as a consuming fire. There is no arbitrariness, but rather divine immutability, in the declarations: "I love them that love me"; "if we deny him, he also will deny us"; "with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure, and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward"; for all these are only emphatic declarations that God's dealings with men shall exactly correspond with their character and conduct.

I am glad it is not my province to judge any of those before me. Let me remind you however that Christ's eye sees and his righteousness will judge you, in exact accordance with your treatment of him and your disposition toward him. When I think that each of you must shortly stand before that crowned. and glorified Saviour, to be either confessed or denied by him, I am impelled to plead with you to make sure that you confess him here not only with the lips but in heart and life. Oh, reflect what it will be to be denied by the only Saviour, the only Friend of sinners, from whose denial there can be no appeal, because in him as in an infinite reservoir is treasured up the whole vast compass of God's redeeming grace and compassion. God has come in Jesus Christ and has manifested himself as the Lamb of love and sacrifice. What hope will there be when the mercy of the Lamb shall be exchanged for the wrath of the Lamb; when all the grace and compassion of the Godhead shall be turned to justice and indignation against those who have rejected and despised him? Better lose all happiness in this world, better undergo all labors, and

endure all sufferings, than to hear Christ say to us at last: "I know you not!" and with that denial to be shut out from God's protection and favor forever, and from all the blessings and joys of the kingdom of heaven!

But on the other hand, what safety, what honor, what endless joy await those who have witnessed a good confession and have stood for Jesus in spite of all the contradictions of the world! Were those Union prisoners sorry they had suffered so much at Andersonville, when they landed at Fortress Monroe under the old flag once more, and President Lincoln thanked them in the name of the republic? And will it not be worth all the cost, and all the suffering of a Christian life, to have Christ come down from his throne at the last great day to welcome us and confess us as his redeemed and faithful ones before his Father and the holy angels? Oh, that we all might sing in heart and life that stirring and exultant hymn:

I'm not ashamed to own my Lord,

Or to defend his cause;
Maintain the honor of his name,
The glory of his cross.

Jesus, my God, I know his name;
His name is all my trust;

Nor will he put my soul to shame,
Nor let my hope be lost.

XL

THE TEARS OF JESUS'

Jesus wept. (John 11:35.)

THIS is the shortest verse in the whole Bible. It is a fact of no great importance in itself, for the division into verses was made by uninspired and frequently injudicious men centuries after the sacred text was first written. Yet it is a fact of interest to us, because it shows us how impressive and affecting these men of other times felt the words to be. In this single instance they did what they never did again,— set two little words in a verse by themselves, as if to intimate that they were unusually solemn and full of meaning. Even a slight meditation upon them will convince us, I think, that these old students of the Scriptures were right, and that here we have a unique statement of the Gospels, through which we catch glimpses of the most characteristic features of our Saviour's nature and work.

Let us notice two things which make it remarkable that Jesus wept. The first is that his tears were not the tears of one who was always weeping, but the tears of the most manly and majestic soul that ever lived. I have heard people say that Jesus never smiled. I wonder where such persons have got their

1A sermon preached in the Calvary Baptist Church, New York City, July 16, 1882.

knowledge; it certainly cannot be from the Scriptures. The evangelists represent our Lord as possessing a complete manhood and as exercising all the emotions proper to manhood. No curtailed and narrow life was his.

In the days of his childhood, the gospel narrative presents him to us as indistinguishable from other children; we naturally think of innocent prattle and childish laughter as well as of childhood's sorrows and tears. And during his ministry, there were times when he rejoiced in spirit, and when that rejoicing must have shone out from eye and lip and brow. Was there no smile upon his face when the weary and heavy laden accepted his invitation and threw themselves down at his feet? None of that frivolity of mind which descends to trifles and turns life itself into a continual jest, nothing of this was there. But we may be sure that there was a calm in Jesus' face which was not often broken by bursts of weeping. Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief as he was, the strong crying and tears were mostly reserved for hours of secrecy, when none but the eye of his Father and a few trusty disciples was on him. His tears. are no commonplace outbreaking of ill-regulated sensibility. All the more remarkable is it then, that this once, in presence of a great crowd of spectators, it is related that " Jesus wept."

There is a second thing that renders these tears remarkable. It is this: They were shed by one who had no griefs of his own over which to weep, and who was just about to remove the immediate cause of the grief he saw about him. As they were not

the tears of unmanliness so they were not the tears of despair. You remember the scene, and the resurrection from the tomb which followed this weeping. And yet the same voice that cried: "Lazarus, come forth!" was, just before, heard uttering the common expressions of human sorrow. The tears were the tears of one who was about to raise the dead. How different they were from the tears which Martha and Mary shed! Martha and Mary wept at the thought of the goodness and truth, and brother's love, which they should never see again on earth. They wept bitterly and inconsolably. But not so Jesus. He had already spoken of Lazarus' death as only a sleep from which divine power would speedily awaken him. He had come to the sepulcher with the distinct purpose of speaking a word of might which would bring back the soul from the abode of spirits. Even while he stood there, the thought must have rejoiced him that he would turn this mourning into gladness and this sorrow into speedy joy. And yet the great Being who was to do all this-he who carried in his girdle the keys of death and hell-stood there amid the tearful crowd, and as men looked upon him, they saw that he too was in tears. "Jesus wept."

Thus we have considered two things which made these tears of Jesus remarkable, namely, the manly calmness of his nature and his power and purpose to remove the immediate cause of the sisters' sorrow. These considerations throw a mystery over these tears of Jesus. What was the cause of these tears? If they were not the overflowings of mere excited sensibility, nor the mournful proof of a despairing heart,