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Literature.
Arnot (W.), Roots and Fruits of the Christian Life, 224.
Banks (L. A.), Christ and His Friends, 310.
Belfrage (H.), Sacramental Addresses, 241.
Eadie (J.), The Divine Love, 268.
Fry (J. H.), TeoA-s, 21.
Gibbon (J. M.), Evangelical Heterodoxy, 53.
Knigbt (G. H.), In the Cloudy and Bark Day, 149.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : John ii.-xiv., 91.
Marjoribanks (T.), In the Likeness of Men, 39.
Martin (A.), Winning the Soul, 265.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, iii. 128.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, 1. 89.
Roberts (A.), Sermons on Gospel Miracles, 247.
Robertson (F. W.), The Human Pace, 108.
Smith (D.), Man's Need of God, 79.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxxv. (1889) No. 2091.
Swing (D.), in The American Pulpit of the Day, i. 271.
Vaughan (C. J.), Christ and Human Instincts, 111.
„ (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ii. (1874) No. 874. Wood (G. R. H.), Miracle Messages, 63. Christian World Pulpit, xii. 217 (Skinner) ; xiii. 67 (Heard) j xixvi. 15
(Spurgeon) ; 1. 199 (Thomas) ; lix. 93 (Swanson). Church of England Pulpit, li. 85 (Bonney).
The Tears of Jesus.
Jesus wept— John xi. 35.
In this text, containing only the two words " Jesus wept," we have not before us the whole character of Jesus Christ ; we have but one aspect of His many-sidedness, but one point in His very complex character. Yet the text is worth separate and careful study, for it is only by studying the seemingly small points that we shall in time arrive at any just appreciation of the wonder of Christ.
The subject divides itself into three branches — I. The Causes of Christ's tears. II. Their Nature. IIL Their Lesson to us.
The Causes of Christ's Tears.
1. Christ's Imimanity. — It is difficult to realize the fact of our
Lord's true humanity. It fades away from our view in the
splendour of His divinity, so close was the union of man with
God. But it was nevertheless a distinct manhood, as perfect
in itself as that worn by any of our race. The entire record
of Christ's life proves the assertion. He was born as the
children are born — a partaker of their "flesh and blood"; and
He was nursed as the children are nursed — growing " in wisdom
and stature." He was hungry, and He ate ; He was thirsty, and
He drank ; He was weary, and He lay down ; He was fatigued,
and He slept ; He was smitten, and He died. Still it is no easy
task to picture to ourselves the merely human sensations and
tendencies which characterized the man Jesus. We believe that
His human nature, sin excepted, was as ours; but it is scarcely
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possible for us to feel it and imagine it, from the overshadowing glory of His higher essence. In consequence of this failure, we are apt to miss no little instruction and comfort as we read the incidents and travel over the scenes of His life. We invest the man with attributes belonging to the God, and unconsciously deify His humanity.
But the Evangelist, from the first, lays down the principle : The word was made flesh. " It is not with a heart of stone that the dead are raised," says Hengstenberg ; and Heb. ii. 17 teaches us that he who would help the unhappy must first of all surrender his heart to feel that very suffering from which he desires to deliver them. It is a remarkable thing that the very Gospel in which the Deity of Jesus is most clearly asserted is also that which makes us best acquainted with the profoundly human side of His life.
^ At first sight, it seems a profane absurdity to talk of God being ignorant, or in sorrow; in pain, or in sickness. Yet we are told that there was no human emotion, in itself sinless, which Jesus could not feel. Hunger, thirst, weariness ; the daily discomforts of life, as well as the anguish of the passion and the cross, were as real to Him as to any one of us. Thus there were, no doubt, moments when the manhood asserted itself so strongly as for a little while to dominate, if the word be per- missible, over the Godhead. We may find a parallel, though but faint and imperfect, in our own experiences. It occasionally happens that though we are intensely interested in some piece of work, we are compelled to lay it aside, because we are exhausted by hunger. Our intellectual, our real self, chafes and frets at desisting from the fascinating task, but the exhausted body refuses to continue ; the brain itself even shows signs of flagging.^
2. Christ* s pity. — Why did the Son of God become Son of man ? Among other reasons, that He might be in perfect sympathy with us ; that, as Bone of our bone, and Flesh of our flesh, He might be able to feel, not merely for us but with us, in all our difi&culties and sorrows and pains. Christ's tears do not mean here what His tears meant when He wept over Jerusalem. He wept then as foreseeing what calamities their hardness of heart would bring upon the people whom He had sought to save ; as thinking what might have been, had they known, in their day of grace, the