The City, Its Sins and Sorrows

ONE evening as Saul returned to Gibeali with Lis cattle from their distant pastures, the lowing of his herd was lost in a wail that grew loud and louder as he drew near the city. Some mischief has happened. Amazed and alarmed, he hurries forward to find the people all dissolved in tears — distracted by some public grief. What can have happened? Bathed in golden sunset, Gibeah from her mountain seat looked quietly down on the green vale of Jordan, away to the shores of the Dead Sea. He saw no occasion whatever tor this terrible turmoil. He saw noi dead 1* nor dying. Why, then, do the men plucl their beards, the women with dishevelled haii and long loud wail beat their naked breasts, and the very children, moved by sympathy and infected with the general grief, mingle their own with their parents’ tears? Since morning, when he left the city, a m.essenger, who sped on flying feet, had arrived, breathless, from Jabesh-Gilead. He brought alarming tidings. He tells Saul’s townsmen that unless they and the country will rise to the rescue, the city must open her gates to the Ammonites, and submit to the most barbarous cruelties. Ignorant of this, nor seeing occasion for their sorrow, Saul, on whom the Spiril of the Lord wlas about to descend, that he might rise an avenger and deliverer of the oppressed, demanded to know the cause of this frantic grief. He said: — “What aileth the people that they weep?”

The same question may be asked regarding the Saviour’s tears on the occasion to which my text refers. A mighty crowd was rolling down upon Jerusalem from the sides of Olivet.

On they came, rending the air with acclamations. With prophetic ear, and five centuries before, Zecbariah had heard these shouts, and catching them, where he, stood upon the heights of prophecy, he shouted back again to the jubilant multitude: — “Kejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold thy King cometh unto thee. He is just, and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass.” Now I can fancy one of that crowd — who was near enough our Lcyd to see the tears upon his cheek — with greater surprise than Saul, asking John or Peter, or some other one of the twelve, who formed all the body-guard of this King, What aileth Jesus that he weeps? In such an hour, wnat makes him sad? Did ever king thus enter his capital — on the eve of his coronation thus present himself to a joyous people? What ails him? What would he have? The nation renders him every honor. His enemies being witnesses, the whole world is gone after him. The palm trees yield their branches, the men their robes, the women their admiration, the whole multitude their voices, as they pour their hearts into the joyous cry: — “Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed be he that oometh in the name of the Lord.” Why, then, that shadow on his thoughtful brow, that deep expression of sorrow on hia face — in his eyes these starting tears? Everything smiles on Jesus. The day is auspicious. Jerusalem has come out to welcome her long expected King. The whole scene is bathed in sunshine, nor is there a cloud in all the sky of his smiling fortunes to account for tlys shower of tears. What aileth Jesus that he weeps? There must be some secret grief, til at, overflowing the deep fountains of his heart, runs out at his eyes in these streaming tears. There was.

Often coveted yet fatal power 1 he foresaw the future. But however eventful to this world were the next three days, it was not on their sad scenes and circumstances that his weeping eye was fixed. Down in that garden, by the glare of midnight torches, thaj; flashed and flickered amid its hoary olives, he saw a

ITS SIN a AJ^D SORKOWS, 9

prisoner bound fast with cords; in yonder judgment hall, that towered conspicuous above the other buildings, he saw a captive, arrayed in the mockery of purple, and bearing on his brow a thorny crown; in that long street which wound through the city, he saw one exhausted by brutal usage, and pale with loss of blood, fainting, falling beneath a cross; and on a distant mount, which rose beyond Jerusalem, by the light of what seemed a dying sun, he dimly saw a mangled form hanging on the fatal tree. In these figures, which presented themselves in affecting and terrible succession, the “seer” saw himself — none around to weep for him but some kind women, nor any to confess him but a dying thief. Is it for this he weeps? No. He looked over the intermediate events, onward to the future of forty years.

The curtain rose. Jerusalem was before him. “He beheld the city;” not as now with the tide of business, but the roar of battle in its streets — torn by contending factions, and Caesar thundering at the gates — brother, staggering from the famine-struck house, to strike his sword into a brother’s bowels — the holiest laws of nature horribly reversed: not infants living on the fountain of a mother’s breast, but mothers — famished, miserable, maddened mothers, feeding upon their own offspring; the breached and battered walls manned by living skeletons; the streets resounding with the groans of the dying, and choked with the festering bodies of the dead. How miserable the aspect of Jerusalem I He beholds scenes of sufferings, which, as described by an eye witness, are without a parallel even in the annals of the most savage wars. Nor does the curtain fall on the stag(- of this tragedy of many terrible acts, until th(; Roman torch has wrapped the city — body and limbs, the house of David, and the house of God — in one red winding sheet of flame, and the Roman plough has buried her guilty ashes in the silent earth.

It was these, the guilt of Jerusalem and the sufferings of his countrymen, that were in Jesus’ eye. Hence this sorrow and thesa tears. Hence, on another occasion, that most touching burst of pitj, patriotism, and piety: “0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” And at a time, when we should have expected, that through the selfishness inherent to suffering, his own sorrows would have absorbed all his feeling, hence also that tender but ominous advice to. the women who bewailed and lamented him: — - “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and children.” Kestrain your grief, keep your tears for a future occasion, reserve them for yourselves, for the babe unborn, the child that hangs upon your breast. When Pontius Pilate — that unhappy time-server — brought out our Lord before the infuriate multitude, perhaps he cherished the hope, that the pitiftd sight would calm their passions, as Jesus’ voice did the blustering winds and rude waves of Galilee. And we are told, that aa Jesus appeared, “wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe,” Pilate appealed to them, saying: — “Behold the man.” These words of a scene, which even in its rudest painting, we cannot study without emotion — although like oil poured, not on the stormy waters, but the roaring fii-e, they only increased and intensified the cry of “crucify him, crucify him,” — may be applied with propriety to the scene before us. “He wept.” This was not a God weeping — God cannot weep. These were not angels’ tears — for angels never weep. In them, in the sad expression on his blessed face, I say with Pilate: — “Behold the man I” the veritable man, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, soul of our soul, heart of our heart, strung by the same hand and tuned to the same harmony as our own. How precious are these sorrows I They attest his perfect manhood. They assure us of his sympathy, when we attempt to lay bare before you the evils of our city, and rouse you to arrest and amend them. They warrant us to expect a blessing from him who loved his kindred as a man, and his country as a patriot From heaven he watches our fight with the powers of darkness, and regards with applauding eje all — the humblest as well as highest labored — who, sighing and crying “for the abominations that are done in the land,” labor to leave the world, their native country, or the city of their habitation, somewhat better than they found them. Before we unveil the evils that call for tears, and, as we shall by and by show, call for some thing else than tears, let us —

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