nal summer, all joy, all light, all music, and heard the gates
slam shut behind Him as He came out to fight for our freedom, and with
bare feet plunged on the sharp javelins of human and satanic hate,
until His blood spurted into the faces of those who slew Him. You want
the soft, low, minor key of sweetest music to describe the pathos; but
it needs an orchestra, under swinging of an archangel's baton,
reaching from throne to manger, to drum and trumpet the doxologies of
His praise. He took everybody's trouble--the leper's sickness, the
widow's dead boy, the harlot's shame, the Galilean fisherman's poor
luck, the invalidism of Simon's mother-in-law, the sting of Malchus'
amputated ear.

Some people cry very easily, and for some it is very difficult to cry.
A great many tears on some cheeks do not mean so much as one tear on
another cheek. What is it that I see glittering in the mild eye of
Jesus? It was all the sorrows of earth, and the woes of hell, from
which He had plucked our souls, accreted into one transparent drop,
lingering on the lower eyelash until it fell on a cheek red with the
slap of human hands--just one salt, bitter, burning tear of Jesus. No
wonder the rock, the sky, and the cemetery were in consternation when
He died! No wonder the universe was convulsed! It was the Lord God
Almighty bursting into tears. Now, suppose that, notwithstanding all
this, a man can not have any affection for Him. What ought to be done
with such hard behavior?

It seems to me that there ought to be some chastisement for a man who
will not love such a Christ. Does it not make your blood tingle to
think of Jesus coming over the tens of thousands of miles that seem to
separate God from us, and then to see a man jostle Him out, and push
Him back, and shut the door in His face, and trample upon His
entreaties? While you may not be able to rise up to the towering
excitement of the Apostle in my text, you can at any rate somewhat
understand his feelings when he cried out: "After all this, 'if a man
love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.'"

Just look at the injustice of not loving Him. Now, there is nothing
that excites a man like injustice. You go along the street, and you
see your little child buffeted, or a ruffian comes and takes a boy's
hat and throws it into the ditch. You say: "What great meanness, what
injustice that is!" You can not stand injustice. I remember, in my
boyhood days, attending a large