ll the
way from Perea, to be with them in their time of distress. He showed
it in his bearing toward them and his conversation with them. There is
a wonderful gentleness in his manner as he receives first one and then
the other sister. Mary's grief was deeper than Martha's; and when
Jesus saw her weeping, and her friends who were with her weeping, he
groaned in the spirit and was troubled. Then, in the shortest verse in
the Bible, we have a window into the very heart of Christ, and find
there most wonderful sympathy.

"Jesus wept." It is a great comfort in time of sorrow to have even
human sympathy, to know that somebody cares, that some one feels with
us. The measure of the comfort in such cases is in proportion to the
honor in which we hold the person. It would have had something--very
much--of comfort for the sisters, if John or Peter or James had wept
with them beside their brother's grave. But the tears of Jesus meant
incalculably more; they told of the holiest sympathy that this world
ever saw--the Son of God wept with two sisters in a great human sorrow.

This shortest verse was not written merely as a fragment of a
narrative--it contains a revealing of the heart of Jesus for all time.
Wherever a friend of Jesus is sorrowing, One stands by, unseen, who
shares the grief, whose heart feels every pang of the sorrow. There is
immeasurable comfort in this thought that the Son of God suffers with
us in our suffering, is afflicted in all our affliction. We can endure
our trouble more quietly when we know that God understands all about it.

There is yet another thing in the manner of Christ's comforting his
friends which is very suggestive. His sympathy was not a mere
sentiment. Too often human sympathy is nothing but a sentiment. Our
friends cry with us, and then pass by on the other side. They tell us
they are sorry for us, but they do nothing to help us. The sympathy of
Jesus at Bethany was very practical. Not only did he show his love to
his friends by coming away from his work in another province, to be
with them in their sore trouble; not only did he speak to them words of
divine comfort, words which have made a shining track through the world
ever since; not only did he weep with them in their grief,--but he
wrought the greatest of all his many miracles to restore the joy of
their hearts and their home. It was a costly miracle, too, for it led
to his own death.

Yet, knowing well what would co