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HIS MELANCHOLY ON THAT OCCASION, CONSIDERED.

his tears or sighs on this occasion. And if we bring fully into view what he was, what were his aims and prospects, we may conjecture a probable and adequate cause of his melancholy. That he was a man of great tenderness of feeling, is evident enough from the whole genius of his religion. Even though we had no direct information concerning him, we might confidently infer from the pacific and gentle character of Christianity, that its author must have been possessed of no common degree of sensibility. Peculiarly formed by nature to appreciate the delights and consolations of human sympathy, he was cut off from all these, so far as the objects and purposes nearest his heart were concerned. There were individuals, it is true, who were affectionately attached to him, but they did not understand him. They did not enter into his lofty views and sympathize with the great aim of his life. He was deprived of all human aids. It was impossible that he should be unconscious of his loneliness of the profound and appalling solitude of the heart in which he stood-a stranger in the world which he loved and yearned towards, with a new and unwonted love. When he stood at the grave of Lazarus, his own fate was near its consummation, and how natural is it that the tokens of human feeling and sorrow, and the sight of a grave, should bring over his mind, with peculiar vividness, a sense of his own melancholy situation-the thought of that rapidly approaching hour when he should suffer and die, without a single heart beating in unison with his. When, a few days after, Mary poured over his person the precious ointment, merely as an expression

JESUS WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM.

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of her profound personal reverence, he immediately connected it with the thought of his death and burial. The perfumed ointment had to him the odour of the grave, and seemed as if intended to embalm his body. So, when I consider what he was, and how he stood in the world, I cannot wonder that he sighed deeply and was distressed, when the images of death and sorrow came thronging around him. That such should have been the feelings which caused him to sigh deeply and repeatedly, was touchingly natural. Besides, what a sense does it give us of his sublime superiority to all selfish weaknesses, to every emotion of self-complacency, that he should evince such a state of mind just when he was about to work a stupendous miracle, and exercise the most astonishing power! What an elevated idea may we form of his greatness, when we perceive that he was not in the slightest degree elated at the thought of the mighty work he was just about to do!

Such is the account that may be given of the melancholy of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus; and so the fact harmonizes with his character and situation. But the authors of the gospel have not breathed a single explanatory word.

When Jesus approached Jerusalem, attended by an immense multitude, shouting hosannas, then too he wept. And then, too, it was, most probably, that he uttered the words, "Now is my soul troubled : and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour." How does his distress at such a time exalt our idea of him! Not for a moment was he blinded by the imposing demonstrations of popular favour.

The whole city was moved to meet him. The excitement was so great and the exciting cause so powerful, that he declared that, if the people could have been unmoved and silent, the very stones would have cried out. Harder, then, than the stones, must have been the hearts of those who remained unaffected by all that Jesus had said and done. The populace lavished upon him the most striking expressions of respect, spreading their garments before him. And he was weeping! He wept because he looked above and beyond the hour, because he was so completely elevated above the weakness of being imposed upon by the dazzling prospect of success, which his popularity at that moment may well have suggested to his mind. He saw that he was entering the city, there to be condemned to death, and that the tide of popular feeling was shortly to be turned against him. The cross which he had long borne in imagination, now began to press with a close and oppressive weight upon his mind. He saw, too, the inevitable ruin of his country, and he broke forth into that pathetic cry, "O that thou hadst known, in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace! but now are they hid from thine eyes!" This incident, however, is recorded with the greatest brevity, and the narrators leave it to speak for itself. They linger not to point out its beauty.

CHAPTER V.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

"While he suffers, the spirit of God and glory rests upon him. There is a glory and a freshness sparkling in him by suffering, an excellency that was hidden.He that doth and can suffer, shall have my heart."-Anon.

THERE is one instance, in which I cannot divest myself of the impression, that Jesus is represented as speaking in a tone of haste and irritation. At least the historians, in their fearless frankness, have not breathed a word to guard us against such an impression. I refer to the exclamation, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" Let us endeavour to appreciate the occasion on which these words were uttered.

In the most public manner Jesus had, by his word, relieved a man who had lost the powers both of sight and of speech, and who, according to the current belief of the times, was under the influence of a malignant spirit. Certain Pharisees, who were among the spectators, charged Jesus with being in league with the very prince of the evil spirits. By this charge, they virtually admitted that the cure he had just wrought transcended the power of man. One cannot but feel that such inveterate perverseness of mind must have shocked him deeply. After replying to the charge in various ways, he went on to make those

solemn declarations which have so often struck terror into the minds of readers: "All manner of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come." Now in the very form of these sentences, I think I perceive that they must have been uttered with great feeling-with the deepest emotion. They are in the shape of general propositions. They are couched in unqualified language. Deep feeling always craves this mode of expression. It delights to leap at once, from the particular circumstances which have excited it, to the annunciation of a general or universal truth; or rather, such is its magnifying power, that it immediately swells out the incident or object which has awakened it, whether it be joyous or otherwise, into a world-embracing light or an allobscuring darkness. It loses sight of all qualifications of time or circumstance.

And here I cannot but mourn, to think how the thrilling life of the Christian scriptures has been concealed through the irrecognition of this mode of expression, so characteristic of intense feeling. Passages, from being expressed in universal terms, have been understood as cold, formal, creed-like statements of theological dogmas, when in fact they assumed their particular form because those by whom they were originally uttered or written, spoke or wrote from hearts bursting with emotion. Thus, for