Vers. 21-31,-Sympathy and solicitude. Before reaching Calvary an interesting and instructivo incident occurred. Among the tumultuous crowd that surged round the soldiers and their victims were many women. These were better away, we are dis- posed to think, from a scene so brutal and so harrowing as this. But \Ve will believe that something better than curiosity, that gratitude, that affection, that womanly pity, drew them, spite of their natural shrinking, to this last sad ending. By whatever motives impelled, they were certainly moved to strong compassion as they saw the l'rophet of Nazareth, the great Healer and Teacher, led forth to die. Their loud laments did not fall on the ear of One too occupied with his own impending doom to hear and heed them. Our Lord made to these weeping women the reply which is here recorded, longer and fuller than we should have supposed the circumstances would allow. It suggests to us- I. '1.'BAT BUMAN DISTRESS NEVER FAILS TO REACH AND TOUCH HIM. If there were any moments in his life when he might have been preoccupied, and might not have noticed the sounds of sorrow, it was this hour of his agony, this hour when the weight of the world's sin rested on his soul, when the great sacrifice was in the very act of being offered. Yet even then he heard and stopped to console the troubled.. An appeal to Jesus Christ in circumstances of sorrow is never ill-timed. II. THAT SUCH SYMPATHY WITH JESUS CHRIST IS ENTIRELY OUT OF PLACE. •• Weep not for me." Some men speak and act as if it were appropriate to express sympathy with the Saviour on account of his sufferiugs. It is, indeed, impossible to read the story of his last hours, and realize what it all meant, without having our sympathetic feeling very keenly quickened; but Jesus Christ does not ask that. we should ~xpress to him, or to one another, our sympathy with him as Ono that then suffered. These sufferings are past; they have placed him upon tho throne of the world; they have made brighter than ever his celestial crown, deeper than ever his heavenly joy. So far as we are concerned, and eo far as they speak of our sin, they may well humble us; in so Jar as lie is concerned, we rPJoice with him that he "was perfected through suffering." III. 'l'uAT A HOLY SOLICITUDE FOR OURSELVES AND OURS IS OFTEN THE MOST APPno- PRIATE SENTIMENT, "Weep for yourselves, and for your children." ,ve know well what reason those Jewish women bed, both as patriots and as mothers, to be concerned fur the fate that threatened their country and their homes. Our Lord certainly would not condemn, would not disparage, an unselfish sympathy. He who wept nt 13ethany, and whose l~w of love was the law that covered 11.lld inspired a gracious \:nmlen-bearing 254 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE:. [cil. xxm. 1-r.rn.
(Gal. 't"i. 2), could not po~sibly do that. Indeed, we seldom st:ind nenrer to his side than when we "weep with them that weep." But thCJre aro many times when we aro tempted to be troubled by onr brother's smaller difficulty instead of beinu0 concerned ahout our own much greater one. Do not bo blind to the bodily pains or the circurn- ~taot.rnl struggles of your neip;h bour; but look eagerly and earnestly to the rent which is opening in your own reputation, to the gap that is increasingly visible in your own con- sistency, to the fact tha.t you are palpably descending the slope which leads down to ~piritnal ruin. IV. THAT TIIER'I!: ADE SAD EXTREMITIES OF EVIL WHEN NOTIIING IS LEFT BUT A HOPELESS CRY. (Ver. 30.) V. THAT SIN AND PU1''"ISHMENT BECOME DEEPER AND NEARER AB TIME GOES ON. The fcreen tree is exposed to the consuming fire; but the green tree in time becomes the dry, and how much more certo.in and more fierce then will be the devouring flame! The nation goes from bad to worse, from the worse to the worst; from dark to darker guilt, from condemnation to calamity. So does a human soul, unguided by heavenly truth and unguarded by holy principle. At any and every time in dan<rer, its peril hecomes continually greater as its guilt becomes constantly deeper. Go ~ot one step further in the course of sin, in the way of worldliness, into the "far country" of forget- fulness. Each step is an approach to a precipice. Return on thy way without a moment's lingering.-C.