2. They are an example.
(1) The following of Christ does not free us from suffering. It often leads to it. Not only are we liable to the ills which press upon humanity, but special chastenings are set apart for us. Believers have sufferings in common with others ; but they have also trials adapted particularly to themselves. The object of Christianity is to train the soul ; and it takes advantage of * J. Royce. * A Modem Mystic's Way,
492 THE TEARS OF JESUS
suffering to aid it in the process of tuition. It works in the sphere of experience.
Genuine grief will have genuine vent ; it demands expression. It is right to grieve, and even deeply grieve, over the sorrows that befall us as we go through the world. It is an inhuman spirit that says, " I will not grieve," whether the determination springs from a proud defiance of fate, or from an exaggerated view of the nothingness of the creature before the Creator, or from an impossible attempt to ignore the bitterness of the means He uses in the great worthiness of the ends He is bringing about. On the contrary, grief is natural and right for the human spirit. It is the confession of the subordination of our lives to the heavenly will, and, at the same time, of the existence in us of those strange capacities of pain and anguish, through which the perfecting of our nature is so largely brought about.
^ Christ, the model of manhood, the mirror of all that was noble and dignified, did not deny Himself the relief of tears; and shall men be looked upon as efi'eminate, as falling from the dignity of their sex, if, with emotions like Christ, they shed tears like Him ? No. He who would aspire to a transcendental apathy that man was not made for, and which Jesus despised, he who would do such violence to his nature insults his Creator, and would foolishly set himself above the example of his Eedeemer. Instead of raising himself above humanity, he sinks beneath its level. The brow that never wore a smile, is not more unnatural than the eye that never glistened with a tear.^
(2) Once more the tears of Jesus bid us sympathize with all sad hearts, and seek to comfort them. For here, as always, He is an example to the sons of God. Our sympathy is, indeed, a weak thing, compared with the sympathy of Jesus ; yet it can do something to help others. We are made for one another. We have a common root. Life is the whole of life. There is a circulation of the blood of the race as well as of the body. We have no exclusive rights to our sorrows, nor has any trouble exclusive rights over us. That which Christ did He bids us do. He bids us follow Him in His sympathy. He bids us have sympathy with man; not in the way of condescension; not as angels stooping to condole ; not as the pure mourning over the 1 J. Eadie, The Divine Love, 294.
ST. JOHN XI. 35 493
impure, but as men touching to heal ; as men not loving the sin yet loving the sinner ; not as breathing by choice infected air, but as infected men nursing, cherishing, giving ourselves for the infected.
Tf The practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity ; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals ; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark, scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own, but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform.^
* G. K. Chesterton, diaries Dickens,
Fruitfulness through Death.
499
LITERATURE.
Bonar (H.), Family Sermons^ 168, 175.
Burrell (D. J.), The Verilies of Jesus, 39.
Burrows (H. W.), Lenten and other Sermons, 111.
Cox (S.), Expositions, ii. 258.
Debenham (A.), On Guard, 24.
Eyton (R.)> ^^ ^^'^^ -^*A 440.
Ferguson (F.), Sermons, 123.
Gotwald (L. A.), Joy in the Divine Government, 107,
Howell (D.), in The Welsh Pulpit of To-Day, 214.
Humberstone (W. J.), The Cure of Care, 97.
Hutton (W. R.), Low Spirits, 63.
Inge (W. R.), Death the Fulfilment of Life^ 1,
Jay (W.), Short Discourses, i. 51.
Leitch (R.), The Light of the Gentiles, 125.
Liddon (H. P.), Passiontide Sermons, 100.
Lorimer (G. C), The Modern Crisis in Religion, 37.
Mackenzie (W. L.), Pure Religion, 20.
Macmillan (H.), Two Worlds are Ours, 230
Mantle (J. G.), " The Way of the Cross,'' 83.
Moberly (G.), Plain Sermons at Brighstone, 76.
Monod (H.), in The Foreign Protestant Pulpit, ii. 43.
Morrison (G. H.), Sunrise, 84.
Mullins (E. Y.), in The Southern Baptist Pulpit, 246.
Rogers (J. H.), The " Verily, Verilys " of Christ, 164.
Selby (T. G.), in God's Garden, 193.
Skrine (J. H.), The Heart's Counsel, 34.
Tauler (J.), Life and Sermons (by Winkworth), 395.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brigbton Pulpit, 1865), No. 513.
Woolsey (T. D.), The Religion of the Present and of the Future, 288.
Christian World Pulpit, x. 347 (Mercer) ; xxiv. 247 (Heard) ; xxix. 253
(Young) ; xxx. 368 (Austin) ; xxxviii. 206 (Rice) ; Ixii. 44 (Jeffs). Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser , x. 304 (Liddon).