villager. It is not even the newly sealed stone which marks the
spot where Lazarus "sleeps." Let us turn aside for a little, and see
this great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears!--the God-man
Mediator dissolved in tenderest grief! Of all the memories of Bethany,
this surely is the _most_ hallowed and the most wondrous. These tears
form the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow,
it may either dry our own tears, or give them the warrant to flow when
we are told--_Jesus wept!_

Whence those tears? This is what we shall now inquire. There is often a
false interpretation put upon this brief and touching verse, as if it
denoted the expression of the Saviour's sorrow for the loss of a loved
friend. This, it is plain, it could not be. However mingled may have
been the hopes and fears of the weeping mourners around him, _He_ at
least knew that in a few brief moments Lazarus was to be restored. He
could not surely weep so bitterly, possessing, as He then did, the
confident assurance that death was about to give back its captive, and
light up every tear-dimmed eye with an ecstasy of joy. Whence, then, we
again ask, this strange and mysterious grief? Come and let us surround
the grave of Bethany, and as we behold the chief mourner at that grave,
let us inquire why it was that "_Jesus wept!_"

(1.) JESUS WEPT _out of Sympathy for the Bereaved_.

The hearts around Him were breaking with anguish. All unconscious
of how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into
joy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its
fearfulness--"Lazarus is dead!" When _He_, the God-man Mediator, with
the refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of
that grief, the pent-up torrent of His own human sympathies could be
restrained no longer. His tears flowed too.

But it would be a contracted view of the tears of Jesus to think that
two solitary mourners in a Jewish graveyard engrossed and monopolised
that sympathy. It had a far wider sweep.

There were hearts, yes--myriads of desolate sufferers in ages then
unborn, who He knew would be brought to stand as He was then doing by
the grave of loved relatives--mourners who would have no visible
comforter or restorer to rush to, as had Martha and Mary, to dry their
tears, and give them back their dead; and when He thought of this,
"_Jesus wept!_"

What an interest it gives to that scene of weeping, to think that at
t