its opportunities, it repented not. Its Rulers
and Chief Priests refused to hear the Word of God spoken by the
Messiah. What the common people listened to gladly, what the fishermen
of Galilee, and the sick and sorrowing rejoiced to hear, Jerusalem
rejected. And so Jerusalem was doomed. Over gorgeous temple, stately
palace, and quiet home alike was written Ichabod--thy glory is
departed. Already the axe was laid to the root of the tree; already
the sentence had gone forth, "cut it down: why cumbereth it the
ground?" Already the hand of the destroyer was upon the city; the
Roman eagle glittered amid the halls of Zion, and the once glorious
sceptre had departed from Judah. Over such a city Jesus wept. And
what of the future? The end came soon. Quickly the Jews filled up the
measure, of their sins. Little thought they, as they watched with jibe
and insult the agonies of God's Son, that those streets of theirs
should run red with the blood of their best and bravest. That famine,
and pestilence, and treachery, and civil war should all attack them
within, whilst the Roman hosts surrounded them without. Little they
thought that the temple where Jesus had been presented, where He had
talked with the doctors, where He had taught such wondrous lessons,
should be burned by the hand of the enemy; that its altars should drip
with Jewish blood; the abomination of desolation stand in the holy
place, and the golden candlestick grace a victor's triumph in the
streets of Rome. Little thought those cruel men, who crucified the
Lord of Life, that within a while the Romans should crucify their
brethren outside the walls of Jerusalem, till there was no wood left to
make a cross. "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this day,
the things which belong to thy peace! But now they are hid from thine
eyes!"

Brothers, those tears of Jesus should be very precious and very
terrible to us. Precious, because they teach us the sympathy, the
tenderness of Christ; terrible, because they show us the awfulness of
sin. What must sin be like if it made God weep! Are there no cities,
no towns, among us over which Jesus might shed tears? Think of the
crimes of our great busy centres of wealth and commerce; think of the
fraud and falsehood which too often disgrace our trade; think of the
selfish, cruel struggle for wealth, in which the weak are trampled down
and ruined; think of the shameful scenes which night after night make
our s