A Great Multitude a Sad Sight.
I. The Redeemer's reason for compassionating the great multitude is a reason of universal application. It was a reason for feeling compassion for that assemblage that day in Palestine; it is a reason for feeling compassion for any assemblage whatever. Christ's pity was not moved by any of those accidental and temporary causes which exist at some times and in some places, and not elsewhere. Sinfulness and the need of a Saviour are things which press, whether felt or not, upon all human beings. That spiritual malady of sin from which the Great Physician alone can save us is one that is wide as the human race. He sees in it the weightiest reason for compassionating any mortal, through every stage of his existence from the first quiet slumber in the cradle to the rigid silence in the shroud.
II. The Redeemer's reason for feeling compassion toward the multitude was the strongest reason for doing so. When we think what sin is and what sin tends to, we cannot but feel how rightly the Saviour judged. For sin is indeed man's sorest disease and man's greatest unhappiness. And sin, if unpardoned, leads to death death spiritual and eternal. A sinful soul is a soul stricken with the worst of diseases, leading to the most awful of deaths. It was because Christ looked on into the unseen world, and discerned the wrath in which sin unpardoned would land the soul, that He felt so deep a compassion as He looked on the great multitude gathered in the Eastern desert.
III. If Jesus thought the sight of a great multitude a sad sight, if He could not look upon the multitude but with compassion, it must have been because He could not look but with compassion on each individual soul in the multitude. And as that multitude was a fair sample of the human race, it follows that Christ feels that there is something for Him to pity as He looks on each of us on each separate human being. Let us be clothed with humility. It is the right frame of spirit for beings such as you and me. Let us go humbly to the foot of the Cross, and, feeling our helplessness, let us patiently wait till the kind Saviour shall look upon us with compassion and take away our sins.
A. K. H. B., The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson,1st series, p. 142.