ting His murder. When He observed the impenitence of
these obdurate hearts at His side, He could not subdue His tenderest
emotion. We read that, when He saw the sisters weeping, _and the Jews
that were with them weeping_, Jesus wept. These Jews could weep for a
fellow-mortal, but they could not weep for _themselves_, and therefore
_for them, Jesus wept_!

One soul was precious to Him. He who alone can estimate alike the worth
and the loss of the soul, might have wept, even had there been but one
then present found to resist His claims and forfeit His salvation. But
these tears extended far beyond that lonely spot in a Jewish village,
and the few impenitent hearts that were then flocking around. These
obdurate Jews were types of the world's impenitency. There was at that
moment summoned before Him a mournful picture of the hardened hearts in
every age--those who would read His gospel, and hear of His miracles,
and listen to the story of His love all unmoved--who would die as they
had lived, uncheered by His grace and unmeet for His presence.

Ah! surely no cause could more tenderly elicit a Redeemer's tears than
_this_--the thought of His Redemption scorned, His blood trampled on,
His work set at nought.

If we have thought of Him shedding tears over the ruin of the _body_,
what must have been the depth and intensity of those tears over the
sadder, more fearful ruin of the soul? Immortal powers, that ought to
have been ennobled and consecrated to His service, alienated, degraded,
destroyed!--immortal beings spurning from them the day of grace and the
hopes of heaven! Bitter as may have been the wail of mourning and
sorrowing hearts that may then have reached His ear from future ages,
more agonising and dismal far must have been the wailing cry which,
beyond the limits of time, came floating up from a dark and dreary
eternity; those who might have believed and lived, but who blasphemed or
trifled, neglected and procrastinated, and finally perished!

If we think of it, it is not the loss of health, or the loss of wealth,
or the loss of friends, which forms the heaviest of trials, the deepest
ground of soul sadness. _We_ put on the sable attire as emblems of
mourning; but if we saw it as a weeping Jesus sees it, there is more
real cause for sackcloth and ashes in the heart at enmity with God, and
despising His salvation, trampling under foot His Son, and enacting
over again the sad tragedy of Calvary.

Reader! are you