He beheld the city, and wept over it
Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I. THE EXCLAMATION OF CHRIST, AND HIS TEARS IN THEIR REJECTION TO THE GUILTY CITY.
1. He remembered days of old. On these sinners the object of His mission seemed entirely lost.
2. But with the self-denying love of a patriot, and the grace of a Saviour, He looked beyond His own sufferings, and fixed His eye on theirs. What an appeal to His pity was there I The city was beleaguered and lost--the dwelling of Holiness was laid waste.
3. The sentence is broken and incomplete. It is eloquently completed by the tears, which are the natural language of compassion, and express its intentness beyond all words. What the present might have been!
II. THE BEARING OF THE RECORD ON OURSELVES.
1. There are things which pre-eminently belong to your peace.
2. The period allotted to you for attending to them is definite and brief.
3. Should your day close, and leave you unsaved, your guilt will be great, and your condition remediless.
4. This is a spectacle calling for the profoundest lamentation.
5. The tears of Jesus prow His unextinguished compassion for the guilty. (John Harris.)
The tears of Jesus
I. LOST PRIVILEGES.
“Oh, that thou hadst known the things which belong unto thy peace.”
II. LOST OPPORTUNITIES.--“Even thou in this thy day. Nations and men have their day:
1. Youth.
2. Special occasions, as Confirmation.
3. Religious strivings within our own manifold opportunities, which may be prized and used, or neglected and abused.
III. LOST SOULS.--“But now they are hid from thine eyes.” (Clerical World.)
Jesus weeping over perishing sinners
I. THAT GOSPEL BLESSINGS ARE CONDUCIVE TO THE PEACE OF MANKIND, They are the things which belong unto our peace. Here let us more particularly observe--
1. What those things are to which our Lord refers. The blessings of grace in this world. Deliverance--from bondage, condemnation, and guilty fears Psalms 116:16; Isaiah 12:1; Psalms 34:4); and holiness--both of heart and life (Obadiah 1:17; Romans 6:22). The blessings of glory in the eternal state. An eternal life of rest, felicity, honour, and security (Romans 2:6-7).
2. How these things are conducive to our peace. They belong unto our peace as they produce sweet tranquillity of mind (Ecclesiastes 2:26). This arises from peace with God (Romans 5:1); peace of conscience 2 Corinthians 1:12); a peaceable disposition (James 3:18,); the joy of victory (Romans 8:37; 1 Corinthians 15:37); and the joy of hope Romans 5:2; Romans 14:17). Our text teaches us--
II. THAT THESE BLESSINGS MUST BE KNOWN TO BE ENJOYED. “Oh that thou hadst known,” etc. The knowledge thus necessary must be--
1. A speculative knowledge; that is, we must have a correct view of them as they are exhibited in God’s Word--For we are naturally without them Romans 3:16-18). We must seek them to obtain them (Job 22:21; Isaiah 27:5). And we must understand them in order that we may seek them aright: we must understand the nature of them; the necessity of them; and the way to obtain them (Proverbs 19:2). The knowledge here required must also be--
2. An experimental knowledge. This is evident--From the testimony of inspired apostles (2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 13:5; 1 John 5:19). And from the nature of gospel blessings; spiritual sight, liberty, and health, must be experienced to be enjoyed. Our text teaches us--
III. THAT A SEASON IS AFFORDED US FOR ACQUIRING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THESE BLESSINGS.
1. This season is here called our day, because it is the time in which we are called to labour for the blessings of peace (John 6:27; Philippians 2:12-13; 2 Peter 3:14).
2. This season is favourable for seeking the things here recommended; for they are set before us (Deuteronomy 30:19-20); we have strength promised to seek them with (Isaiah 40:31); and we have light to seek them in (John 12:36). Hence, we should also recollect--
3. This season is limited: it is only a day. Our text also teaches us, with respect to gospel blessings--
IV. THAT IT IS GOD’S WILL THEY SHOULD BE ENJOYED BY US. This is certain
1. From the wish of Christ--“O that thou hadst known,” etc. Such a wish we find often repeated by God in His Word, and expressed in the kindest manner; see Deuteronomy 5:29, Deuteronomy 32:29; Isaiah 48:18.
2. From the tears of Christ. These demonstrate the sincerity of His wish Deuteronomy 32:4); the great importance of godliness (1 Timothy 4:8); and the dreadful doom of impenitent sinners (Romans 2:8-9).
3. From the visitations of Christ. He visited us by His incarnation; and He still visits us by the strivings of His Spirit, the gifts of His providence, and the ministry of His Word.
V. THAT ALL WHO SEEK THESE BLESSINGS ARIGHT WILL OBTAIN THEM.
VI. THAT THE REJECTION OF THESE BLESSINGS IS PUNISHED WITH DESTRUCTION. (Theological Sketch-book.)
The tears of Jesus
We are told three times of Christ weeping: in this passage; in John 11:35; in Hebrews 5:7.
1. JESUS WEPT IN SYMPATHY WITH OTHERS. At Bethany.
1. It is not sinful to weep under affliction.
2. The mourner may always count on the sympathy of Jesus.
3. When our friends are mourning, we should weep with them.
II. THE TEAR OF JESUS’ COMPASSION. Text.
1. Observe the privileges which were granted the Jews, and neglected.
2. Observe the sorrow of Jesus for the lost.
III. THE TEARS OF PERSONAL SUFFERING. Probably the Agony in Gethsemane is alluded to in Hebrews 5:7.
1. Think not that because you suffer you are not chosen.
2. Nor that you are not a Christian because you feel weak. (W. Taylor, D. D.)
The tears of Jesus
I. Our Lord, by His tears over Jerusalem proclaims to us THE DUTY OF LOOKING AT THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD IN THEIR TRUE LIGHT, of estimating all that surrounds us, not as it appears to the hope, the fear, the enthusiasm, the pride of many, but as it is viewed in the sight of God, whose judgment shall alone stand, when the false standards and false excitements of the moment have passed for ever away. His tears speak to us the same lesson which He elsewhere taught in words, “Judge not after the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” For there was apparently little to draw forth the tears of our Blessed Lord at that moment. And is it not so now, my brethren? Do we not exult and rejoice in things, and persons, and scenes which would call forth only tears from our Saviour? Oh that we may strive to see things in their true light--that is, in the light of the eternity in which we shall soon find ourselves I oh that we may estimate them, not by the standards of sense and time, but in the true balance of God’s unerring judgment
II. And, secondly, we see, as from other passages of Holy Scripture, THE EXCEEDING SINFULNESS OF SIN, in that sin has the power of calling forth tears from the Saviour in the midst of so much exultation and beauty. Ah! my brethren, nothing is so truly mournful as sin. It is the great evil of life; neither poverty, nor sickness, nor slanderous words, nor the contempt of the world, have any real sting in them apart from this. Take sin away, and the world becomes a Paradise. Take sin away, and the lives of the unfortunate are filled with happiness. It is sin which has cast a blight over existence on every side of us: trace each form of suffering and sorrow around you to its ultimate source, and you will find that source to be sin. Alas! brethren, there are many who come to Church, Sunday after Sunday, and even approach the Holy Communion, and yet know nothing of their own hearts, and the deadly poison of unrepented sin, which dwells within them, and the real peril in which their souls are placed. (S. W.Sheffington, M. A.)
Christ weeping ever Jerusalem
Tears, looked at materially, admit a very ready explanation; they are secreted by a gland, they are drawn from the fluids of the body, and are rounded and brought down by the law of gravitation. The poets give the spiritual meaning, when they call tears the blood of the wounds of the soul, the leaves of the plant of sorrow the hall and rain of life’s winter, the safety valves of the heart under pressure, the vent of anguish-showers blown up by the tempests of the soul. If God had a body He would weep. God does grieve, and ii He had a corporeal nature, tears would not be inconsistent with all the recognized attributes of Deity. There is an eloquence in tears which is irresistible. There is a sacredness in tears which almost forbids the discussion of weeping. There is a dignity in tears which makes them consistent with the utmost intelligence and strength and nobility of character. There are men with hard heads, cold hearts, good digestion, and full purses, who know nothing of tears; but he who values true manhood and spiritual riches will not envy such men. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
1. Jesus wept as a man, as the man Christ Jesus, as the perfect man Christ Jesus. “Behold the man.” To the utmost extent of human sadness was Jesus grieved, when “He beheld the city, and wept over it.”
2. Jesus wept as a Jew. The broadest love may be discriminating, and may include strong individual attachments. Jesus was interested in every land and in every race. No land or race was shut out from His heart. But there were special attachments to Palestine, and strong ties to the holy city.
3. Jesus wept as a teacher. Light had come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. And this was the condemnation. He was conscious of a pure heart in His teaching, and He saw the corruption of the human heart in the rejection and contempt of His instructions.
4. Jesus wept as a foreteller, as a prophet. He who was the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person, declared the mind and will and heart of God, when, beholding this doomed city, He wept over it.
5. Jesus wept as the Messiah. He was the woman’s seed promised in Paradise. He was the Shiloh seen by Jacob. He was the prophet revealed to Moses. He was the Prince of peace spoken of by Isaiah. To Him gave all the prophets witness. The law was His shadow. Much was written in the Psalms and prophets concerning Him. His history and character, His words and works, fulfilled various scriptures written by inspired men. His claim to the Messiahship was distinct and full and clear. Yet He was despised and rejected of men. Yet when He came to His own, His own received Him not. This was a sorrow for His Father’s sake. He was the fufilment of His Father’s ancient and oft-repeated promise. He was His Father’s unspeakable gift. What a requital of infinite and eternal love! And this was a sorrow for the people’s sake. Instead of receiving Him they were looking for another. But Jesus knew that theft eyes would fail by looking in vain.
6. Jesus wept as a Saviour. He looked upon those who would not be saved, and wept over them. Measure His sorrow by His knowledge and by His hatred of sin; measure His sorrow by His own freedom from sin; measure His sorrow by the love of His great heart. To see evil, and to be unable to remedy it, is anguish; but to see evil, and to be able and willing to remove it, and to be baffled by the wilfulness and waywardness of the sufferer or of the evil-doer, is anguish keener and deeper still. Jesus knew all this when “He beheld the city, and wept over it.”
7. Jesus wept as God manifest in flesh. The God grieved and the man wept. The Divine nature does suffer, and these tears reveal the fact. The whole nature of the Christ, the Redeemer of men, was sad, when Jesus on this occasion wept. These tears, then, were the tears of a man, a patriot, a teacher, and a prophet. They were the tears of the Messiah and the Saviour and the God-man. They were both human and divine, tears of pity and patriotism, tears of sympathy and of displeasure, tears of a wounded spirit and of a loving soul. (S. Martin, D. D.)
The tears of Jesus
1. The tears of Jesus Christ are compassionate tears. Like His heavenly Father, He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. The office of the Judge is not His willing office. It made Him sorrowful to see men sin. It made Him sorrowful to see men reject the gospel. It made Him sorrowful to see men choose their own misery.
2. Again, the tears of Jesus are admonitory, warning--some have even called them terrible tears. He would not have wept, I think we may say with confidence, merely because a little pain, or a little suffering, or even a little anguish and misery, lay before us. He shrank not from pain: He endured suffering--yea, the death of the Cross. He faced anguish and misery, and flinched not. There was only one thing which Jesus Christ could not endure--or, if He endured it for an hour Himself, certainly could not advise others, nor bear others, to encounter without Him--and that was the real displeasure, the prolonged hiding of the countenance, the actual, terrible, punitive wrath of God. It was because He foresaw that for impenitent, obstinate, obdurate sinners, that He wept these bitter tears. I call them admonitory tears; I will even consent to call them terrific tears. They seem to say to us, “Oh, presume not too far!”
3. I will add another thing. The tears of Jesus were exemplary tears. As He wept, so ought we to weep. We ought to weep tears of sorrow over our sins. We ought to weep tears of repentance over our past lives, over our many short-comings and backslidings, omissions of good and commissions of evil, lingering rebelling obstinate sins, cold poor languishing dying graces. But more than this. We ought to weep more exactly as He wept. He wept not for Himself: so also, in our place, should we.
4. I will add, without comment, a fourth word--the tears of Jesus Christ are consolatory tears. Yes, this, in all their accents, is the sweet undersong--Jesus Christ cares for us. The tears of Jesus are, above all else,consolatory. They say to us, “Provision is made for you.” They say to us, “It is not of Christ, it is not of God, if you perish.” They say to us, “Escape for your life--because a better, and a higher, and a happier life is here for you!” (Dean Vaughan)
Christ weeping over sinners
I. WHAT OUR LORD DID: “He beheld the city, and wept over it.”
1. He wept for the sins they had committed, and the evil treatment which He Himself should receive at their hands.
2. He foresaw the calamities which were coming upon them, and desired not the woful day.
3. Spiritual judgments also awaited them, and this was matter of still greater lamentation.
4. The final consequence of all this also affected the compassionate Saviour; namely, their everlasting ruin in the world to come.
II. Consider WHAT OUR LORD SAID AS WELL AS DID, when He came near and beheld the city--“If thou hadst known,” etc. Here observe--
1. The whole of religion is expressed by knowledge. Not speculative, but such as sanctifies the heart and influences the conduct--the holy wisdom that cometh from above.
2. That which it chiefly concerns us to know is, “the things which belong to our peace.”
3. There is a limit to which this knowledge is confined. “This thy day.”
4. When this time is elapsed, our case will be for ever hopeless: Now the things which belong unto thy peace “are hid from thine eyes!” Improvement.
(1) did Christ weep for sinners; and shall they not weep for themselves? Does not God call us to weeping; and does not our case call for it?
(2) Let us beware of rejecting the gospel, and trifling with our privileges, lest we be given up to final impenitence. Insensibility is the forerunner of destruction:
(3) Let those who are truly acquainted with the things which belong to their peace be thankful, and adore the grace which has made them to differ. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
.
Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I. I observe, in the first place, that THERE ARE CERTAIN THINGS, THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR ETERNAL PEACE.
1. It deeply concerns you to know, for example, in what situation you stand, with respect to God and the world to come.
2. Again, it deeply concerns us to know, whether God, by any means, may be reconciled, to those who have set themselves in opposition to His will.
3. Once more, it deeply concerns you to know, what state of mind is required in you, in order that you may profit by the grace and mercy of your dying Saviour.
II. I observe, secondly, that THE SON OF GOD IS MOST AFFECTIONATELY DESIROUS THAT WE SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS.
III. NEVERTHELESS, THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST WILL NOT STOP THE COURSE OF HIS JUSTICE, IF THESE THINGS BE FINALLY DISREGARDED.
1. HOW inexcusable is the thoughtless sinner, who, after all, will not know the things which belong unto his peace!
2. But reflect, on the other hand, how welcome will every returning sinner be! (J. Jowett, M. A.)
The Saviour’s tears over Jerusalem
The sight of Jerusalem, then, as Jesus was about to enter it, suggested the thought of national misery and degradation. He looked on the Temple, the place where the adorations and sacrifices of successive generations had been offered; it was now profaned. He looked on the city, the metropolis of Judaea, and the scene of high solemnities, and it was peopled by transgressors; was soon to be reduced by the might of a conquering power, its streets to be drenched with blood, and its buildings to be razed. Our Lord might chiefly allude to outward calamity, but can we doubt that the moral state of Jerusalem’s inhabitants was what gave Him most concern? The doom spoken of descended as an act of vengeance, inflicted by God. But Jesus thought also of a still more pitiable wreck. He reflected on the consequences of unpardoned sin. It was not merely the overthrow of tower and palace, the destruction of what had been for so long a “house of prayer”; this called not forth an expression of such deep concern. It was principally an idea of the spiritual ruin coming upon such as had transgressed against so much light and warning, and who had resisted such earnest and oft-repeated pleadings.
I. In further speaking from these verses, we may consider, first of all, the words to imply, that the people of Jerusalem HAD ENJOYED A “DAY”--OF GRACE, NOW DRAWING TO A CLOSE--a time which had not been followed by suitable and adequate improvement.
II. Let us consider our Lord’s manifestation of feeling and His words on this occasion, as showing THE IMPORTANCE OF IN TIME ATTENDING TO THE THINGS THAT “BELONG TO OUR PEACE.”
III. It would appear that THERE IS A SET TIME ALLOWED FOR DOING THIS. Though it were true that the spirit of God ceases not to strive with man; though there were not danger of the sinner being wholly given up to his idols, yet to defer so great a work is hazardous and foolish. Is that the best time for turning to God when languor and decay are attacking the frame?
IV. Our Saviour’s declaration, when He bewailed Jerusalem’s impenitence, is A PLEDGE OF HIS CONCERN FOR THE STATE OF SINNERS GENERALLY. Observe how long-suffering He was, saying still, “Turn ye at My reproof.” They had slain His prophets; they were about to shed His blood; they had cast dishonour on the law and appointments of the Most High, provoking Him to anger; yet Jesus’ sorrow showed the grief that filled His soul. These were the words of One who knew no guile, and to whom iniquity was abhorrent. Be encouraged therefore, O sinner, however many thine iniquities and pungent thy sense of guilt, to seek His favour. (A. R.Bonar, D. D.)
Jesus weeping over sinners
I. SIN IS NO TRIFLE.
II. EVERY MAN HAS HIS DAY OF MERCIFUL VISITATION. But mercy has its limits. The day of grace will close.
III. THE SINNER’S DOOM IS SEALED WHEN CHRIST GIVES HIM UP. The die cast salvation beyond reach. Hope gone.
IV. IT IS A LOST SEASON OF MERCY AND OPPORTUNITY THAT WILL SO EMBITTER THE ETERNITY OF THE LOST. (J. M. Sherwood, D. D.)
Tears on beholding a multitude of men
There is always something heart-moving in the sight of a multitude of men. The Persian Xerxes shed tears as he watched the interminable ranks march past him on the way to Greece. The iron Napoleon once melted as he reviewed the vast army which followed him to his Russian campaign. And when the proudest, sternest, and most unfeeling hearts have shown emotion, what should we expect from the pitiful Son of God? Whenever He saw the multitude, and especially the city multitude, He was moved with compassion. That mass of life, heaving and throbbing like a troubled sea; that ceaseless tramp of eager feet and confused roar of innumerable voices; that measureless volume of mingled hope and despair; that infinitely varied array of faces, old and young, careless and anxious, joyous and miserable,--of laughing girls and broken-hearted widows, of jocund joys and haggard old men, with hungry looks; that incongruous procession of wealth and poverty, of want and superfluity, of rags and velvet, of vulgarity and refinement, of respectability and vice, of plump and well-fed life and vagrant homelessness, of purity and shame, of sweet religious hope and dismal despair, of titled splendour and nameless vagabondism, of feet winged with hope climbing to ambition’s goal and of feet hurrying to the dark river to end the tragedy of bitter memories in one last cold plunge; that myriad-headed life, with all its selfish isolations, its fierce loneliness amid the jostling crowd, its every heart knowing its own bitterness or gloating over its own joy, unknown and unsympathized with by its neighbours; that awful race of passion and frenzied quest in which the runners forget that they are immortal souls with God’s image stamped on every face. How was it possible for Him, to whom all souls were dear--all the children of the heavenly Father--how was it possible for Him to look upon that, or think of it, without emotion melting into tears? What man or woman of us can think of it without sharing in its pity and pathetic interest? (J. Greenhough, M. A.)
Christ’s compassion for the Jewish people
I. INQUIRE WHAT THERE WAS IN THE STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE, WHICH SO MOVED THE COMPASSION OF OUR LORD. The privileges of the Jewish people were above all lands. They were blessed with a divine theocracy; and to them belonged, amongst other most important privileges, the oracles of God. What could God have done which He had not done for them? The compassion of our Lord was moved, therefore--By their inflexible obstinacy. Theirs was the sin of men who hate the light, lest by it their deeds should be reproved!
2. Inveterate hostility. That greatness and power, when abused, should be hated, would not excite our surprise; but that goodness and mercy, when exercised, should be hated, might well excite our surprise, were it not abundantly proved in their history.
3. By their impending judgments.
II. CONSIDER WHAT THE PRESENT STATE OF THAT PEOPLE CALLS FOR FROM OUR HANDS. (W. Marsh, M. A.)
The tears and lamentations of Jesus
I. First, we are to contemplate OUR LORD’S INWARD GRIEF.
1. We note concerning it that it was so intense that it could not be restrained by the occasion. The occasion was one entirely by itself: a brief gleam of sunlight in a cloudy day, a glimpse of summer amid a cruel winter. That must have been deep grief which ran counter to all the demands of the season, and violated, as it were, all the decorum of the occasion, turning a festival into a mourning, a triumph into a lament.
2. The greatness of His grief may be seen, again, by the fact that it overmastered other very natural feelings which might have been, and perhaps were, excited by the occasion. Our Lord stood on the brow of the hill where He could see Jerusalem before Him in all its beauty. What thoughts it awakened in Him! His memory was stronger and quicker than ours, for His mental powers were unimpaired by sin, and He could remember all the great and glorious things which had been spoken of Zion, the city of God. Yet, as He remembered them all, no joy came into His soul because of the victories of David or the pomp of Solomon; temple and tower had lost all charm for Him; “the joy of the earth” brought no joy to Him, but at the sight of the venerable city and its holy and beautiful house He wept.
3. This great sorrow of His reveals to us the nature of our Lord. How complex is the person of Christ! He foresaw that the city would be destroyed, and though He was divine He wept. While His nature on the one side of it sees the certainty of the doom, the same nature from another side laments the dread necessity.
4. In this our Lord reveals the very heart of God. Did He not say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father”? Here, then, you see the Father Himself, even he who said of old, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn,” etc.
5. From a practical lesson, we may remark that this weeping of the Saviour should much encourage men to trust Him. Those who desire His salvation may approach Him without hesitation, for His tears prove His hearty desires for our good.
6. This, too, I think is an admonishment to Christian workers. Never let us speak of the doom of the wicked harshly, flippantly or without holy grief.
7. Let me add that I think the lament of Jesus should instruct all those who would now come to Him as to the manner of their approach. While I appealed to you just now were there any.who said, “I would fain come to Jesus, but how shall I come”? The answer is,--come with sorrow and with prayer, even as it is written, “they shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them.” As Jesus meets you so meet Him.
III. We are now to consider our LORD’S VERBAL LAMENTATIONS. These are recorded in the following words: “Oh that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”
1. First, notice, he laments over the fault by which they perished--“Oh that thou hadst known.” Ignorance, wilful ignorance, was their ruin.
2. The Lord laments the bliss which they had lost, the peace which could not be theirs. “Oh that thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace.”
3. But our Lord also lamented over the persons who had lost peace. Observe that He says,--“Oh that thou hadst known, even thou. Thou art Jerusalem, the favoured city. It is little that Egypt did not know, that Tyre and Sidon did not know, but that thou shouldst not know!” Ah, friends, if Jesus were here this morning, He might weep over some of you and say--“Oh that thou hadst known, even thou.”
4. Our Lord wept because of the opportunity which they had neglected. He said, “ At least in this thy day.” It was such a favoured day: they aforetime had been warned by holy men, but now they had the Son of God Himself to preach to them.
5. The Lord Jesus mourned again because He saw the blindness which had stolen over them. They had shut their eyes so fast that now they could not see: their ears which they had stopped had become dull and heavy; their hearts which they had hardened had waxen gross; so that they could not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor feel in their hearts, nor be converted that He should heal them. Why, the truth was as plain as the sun in the heavens, and yet they could not see it; and so is the gospel at this hour to many of you, and yet you perceive it not.
6. Lastly, we know that the great flood-gates of Christ’s grief were pulled up because of the ruin which He foresaw. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The tears of Jesus
Strangely mysterious are these tears! But they were as real as they are mysterious--solemnly and awfully real--the bitterest that ever descended from a grief-stricken countenance. They were the tears of a man, but the expression of Deity; and viewing them in the light of the ancient love and peculiar complacency with which Jerusalem and its inhabitants had been divinely regarded, we may designate them as the tears of disappointed affection. How briny and how many have been such tears, as they have fallen, hot and scalding, from the eyes of broken-hearted weepers! There are the tears of the father, welling up from the depths of parental love, in thinking of his prodigal boy. There are the tears of the mother, wept over a lost daughter--tears that had been less bitter had the green turf received them instead of a memory of shame. Bitter, indeed, are such tears, but not so intensive of sorrow as “the tears of Jesus wept over lost souls.” I have read somewhere of a traveller who found a fragment of an arch among the ruins of Jerusalem; and by calculating on the principles of architectural construction, he proved that the arch, when complete, must have spanned the gulf that was near the city, and have rested on the other side. That ruined arch, to the eye of that traveller, indicated what it originally was, as contrasted with what it then was. Sin in the soul reveals the same thing. In man, apart from sin, we see what the soul was made to be. In sin we see what the soul is--a noble thing in ruins. It is solemnizing to walk amidst the vestiges of some sacred temple--to pick up here and there fragments of what were once objects of beauty and strength; to see in one place pieces of an antique window; in another, the segment of a colossal pillar; elsewhere, a remnant of tracery work, with bits of rich and curious mosaic. But what must have been the emotions of Jesus, as He stood there before the collapsed powers, and contemplated the desecrated sanctities of human temples!--souls once so fair in beauty, and so glorious in strength, that the Creator looked upon them, and “behold, they were very good!” Now so completely a wreck that as the Saviour looked, “He beheld and wept!” How fearful is the power belonging to man! Here we see the Son of God--One whose might and dominion over all material forces, satanic agencies, and physical ailments were absolute. No power stood in His way as a resisting medium save one; and this was a power of resistance that opened the floodgates of soul-sorrow, drew tears from His eyes, and broke forth in the convulsive exclamation: “O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” In the light of these tears what awful responsibility is seen to clothe the human spirit! What power of will!--of a will that can resist the Divine will! “How often would I, but ye would not!” (G. H. Jackson.)
Tears a true mark of manhood
If it really was so, as has been gathered from Epiphanius, that some of the ancient Christians, or persons who bore the name, wished to expunge from the canon of Scripture what is said of the Saviour’s weeping on these two occasions, as if it had been unworthy of so glorious a Person to shed tears, it was very strange, and betrayed at once a sinful disrespect for the inspired Word of God, a leaning to the doctrines of Stoical pride and apathy, and an ignorance of what constitutes real excellence of human character. It is certainly a mark of imbecility to be given to weep for trifling reasons; but to weep occasionally, and when there is an adequate cause, instead of being a weakness, is perfectly compatible with true courage and manly sense, nay, is, in fact, a trait in the character of the majority of the most heroic and stout-hearted men of whom we read, either in sacred or profane history. As examples of this from Scripture may be mentioned, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, David, Jonathan, Hezekiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and Paul. Who more firm than the apostle of the Gentiles?--yet he thus writes to the Philippians, “Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction.” As for King David, that “mighty valiant man, and man of war,” the ancestor, and, in some respects, the type of Christ, it is worthy of notice that he wept at the very place were Jesus now wept; for it is thus written, in the account of his fleeing from Jerusalem, on the rebellion of Absalom, “David went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered; and all the people that were with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” Nor is it foreign to the defence of this act of weeping, as consonant with the character of the brave, to produce the authority of heathen writers. Homer, then, attributes tears to several of his heroes, Virgil to AEneas, and their respective historians to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cato, Brutus, Marcellus, and Scipio; and one of the Latin poets says, “Nature shows that she gives very tender hearts to mankind, by giving them tears. This is the best part of our disposition or feeling.” Beyond a doubt, the tenderness which our Lord now displayed harmonized with, and set off by contrast, the wonderful resolution which animated Him, when “He turned not back,” but “set His face like a flint” to what was now before Him. (James Foote, M. A.)
The tears of love
I heard the other day of a bad boy whom his father had often rebuked and chastened, but the lad grew worse. One day he had been stealing, and his father felt deeply humiliated. He talked to the boy, but his warning made no impression; and when he saw his child so callous the good man sat down in his chair and burst out crying, as if his heart would break. The boy stood very indifferent for a time, but at last as he saw the tears falling on the floor, and heard his father sobbing, he cried, “Father, don’t; father, don’t do that: what do you cry for, father?” “Ah! my boy,” he said, “I cannot help thinking what will become of you, growing up as you are. You will be a lost man, and the thought of it breaks my heart.” “Oh, father!” he said, “pray don’t cry. I will be better. Only don’t cry, and I will not vex you again.” Under God that was the means of breaking down the boy’s love of evil, and I hope it led to his salvation. Just that is Christ to you. He cannot bear to see you die, and He weeps over you, saying, “How often would I have blessed you, and you would not! “ Oh, by the tears of Jesus, wept over you in effect when He wept over Jerusalem, turn to Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
If thou hadst known, even thou
Christ’s lament over Jerusalem
Let us observe, briefly, that in our Lord’s lament over the doomed city there is to be traced a threefold vein of feeling.
1. The tears and words of Jesus Christ are the tears and words of a true patriot, for Jerusalem was the heart and head of the nation. It was, politically speaking, more what Paris is to France than what London is to England, and although Christ’s ministry had been largely spent in Galilee, we know from St. John’s Gospel that at the great festivals He had laboured often and continuously in the sacred city. It may be thought that there was no place for patriotism in the heart of Jesus Christ--that coming as He did from heaven with a mission to the whole race of men, and with a work to do for each and for all, He could not thus cherish a mere localized and bounded enthusiasm--that, as all had interest in Him, His interest must reciprocally be for all and world-embracing--that as in Him, according to His apostle, “there is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free,” but all are one, so He must have been Himself incapable of that restricted and particular concentration of thought and feeling and action upon the concerns of a single race or district which we practically understand by patriotism. My brethren, there is an element of truth in this. Jesus Christ, although a Jew by birth, belonged by His freedom from local peculiarities to the whole human family. He was, in a higher, more comprehensive, more representative sense than any before Him, human. All that was best, all that was richest in humanity, had its place in Him, and this is, at any rate, one import of the title by which He was commonly wont to speak of Himself as the Son of Man. But His relation to the whole race did not destroy His relation to His country any more than it destroyed His relation to His family--to His mother, to His foster-father, to those first cousins of His who, after the Hebrew manner, are called His brethren. Certainly He subordinated family ties as well as national ties to the claims of the kingdom of God--to His Father’s business as He called it when only twelve years old. But because He kept these lower sympathies, claims, obligations, in their proper place, He did not ignore--He did not disavow them. To Him, as the Son of Mary, His family was dear; to Him, as the Son of David, the history of His country was dear. He would have parted with something of His true and deep humanity had it been otherwise; and therefore when He gazed on the city of His ancestors (for such it was) and saw in vision the Roman conqueror already approaching, and casting up earthworks on that very hill on which He was standing, and then by and by entering the sacred city with fire and sword, nor resting from His work till he had ploughed up the very foundations, till not one stone had been left upon another, His Jewish heart felt a pang of anguish which became tears and words. “If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.”
2. But the lamentation of Christ over Jerusalem had a higher than any political or social meaning. The polity of Israel was not merely a state: it was a church as well. It was the kingdom of God among men. It is this which explains the passionate emotion towards Jerusalem which abounds in the Psalter--the joy in her glory, in her beauty, in her world-wide fame--the enthusiasm which can “walk about Zion and go round about her andtell the towers thereof”--the anger deep and strong which cannot forget that in the day of Jerusalem it was Edom which joined in the cry for her destruction--the woe which cannot, which will not, be comforted when she lies before the heathen in her ruin and her desolation. It was as a theocratic kingdom--as we should say, a Church--that Jerusalem and the whole Jewish polity was so dear to the religious Jew; and this aspect of the sacred city underlies those words which Jesus spoke on the road from Bethany. Once more. Jerusalem was not merely a country or a church; it was a hive of men and women: it was a home of souls. Among these, to each of these, the Divine Christ had preached, but had preached in vain it was not the threatened architecture of the Herodian temple which drew tears from those Divine eyes. It was not chiefly the tragic ending of a history rich in its interest and its incident. It was the condition, the destiny, the eternal destiny of the individual men and women of that very generation to which Christ had ministered? What of them? They had heard Him; and what were they after hearing Him? Ah! it was over those souls for which He was presently to shed His blood that Jesus wept His tears. It was souls that for Him made up Jerusalem. And it is in this last sense that our Lord’s words come most closely home to us. Our influence upon our country, upon our portion of the Church, is necessarily very, fractionally small. We are each one as a private soldier in a great army, who has only to obey orders that are given by others; but in our individual capacities it is otherwise. Here as single souls we decide as well as act. Here we are free to make the most of opportunities: we are responsible for doing so. And opportunities come to us as we walk along the path of life, as Christ came to the Jews eighteen centuries ago. They come to us: we see them coming. We know that they are at hand--that they are close upon us. We know--we might know--that they will not be within our reach always--perhaps not to-morrow. It is the time, the solemn time, of our visitation. It is some friend who has brought before us for the first time the true meaning, the true solemnity, the blessedness of life. It is some change of circumstances, some great soul-subduing sorrow which has forced upon us a sense of the transitory nature of all things here below. It is some one truth or series of truths about our Divine Lord, His person, or His work, unknown, or known and rejected before, which has been borne in upon us with a strength and clearness of conviction which we cannot, if we would, possibly mistake, and which involves obedience, action, sacrifice, as its necessary correlatives. It is an atmosphere of new aspirations, of higher thoughts, of longings to be other and better than we are, that has, we know not how, taken possession of us. It is the presence and the breathing, could we only know it, of a heavenly Friend who haunts our spirits that, if we will, He may sanctify them. Christ--in one word--has been abroad by His Spirit in the streets and secret passages of the soul, as of old He was abroad in the by-ways and the temple-courts of Jerusalem; and the question is, Have we welcomed Him?--Have we held Him by the feet, and refused to let Him go except He bless us? We are worse off though we may not trace the deterioration. We have suffered if not without yet assuredly within. We have been tried, and failed; and failure means weakness entailed upon, incorporated into, the system of the soul. (Canon Liddon.)
Tenth Sunday after Trinity
We have here, not only weeping but tearful lamentation, weeping accompanied with voice and words; and the weeper is the God-man, Christ Jesus. Eternal Deity is not an unfeeling Almightiness. He has a heart, and that heart can be touched, and grieved, and moved with compassion, and stirred with emotions.
I. GOD INTENDS GREAT THINGS FOR THOSE TO WHOM HE HAS GIVEN HIS WORD AND ORDINANCES. He had chosen Jerusalem, and set up His temple there, and made it the centre of His most particular dealings with the elect nation, that it might reflect His glory, show forth His praises, and be the crown and rejoicing of the whole earth. The thing meant to be reached and made the everlasting possession of its people, is here summed up by the Saviour in the word “peace; not mere rest from disturbance and strife; nor yet only health and well-being, as the word often denotes in the Old Testament; but that which is the subject of Divine promise, the highest results of God’s mercy and favour, the true Messianic blessing of everlasting freedom from the distresses and consequences of sin, and exaltation to near and holy relationship with God and heaven. And great things are meant for us, even the same things of “peace” which pertained at first to the ancient Jerusalem.
II. THERE IS A DAY OR SEASON WHEREIN TO KNOW AND ATTEND TO THE THINGS THAT RESPECT THIS “PEACE.” And unto us have their forfeited privileges now descended. This is our day, beaming with all the light and blessings which once belonged to the Jews, only marked by an easier ritual and a better economy (Hebrews 12:18-24).
III. THE DAY OF GRACE HAS ITS BOUNDARIES OVER WHICH GOD’S SAVING MERCIES DO NOT FOLLOW THOSE WHO MISIMPROVE THEM. There was a Jewish age which ended in judgment, and the cutting off of those who failed to improve it; and so this present age must also end. The day of grace is limited, on the one side, by the lateness of the period in life at which the gospel comes to a man, and, on the other, by the failure of the faculties necessary to handle and use it. It is also quite possible for one’s day of grace to terminate while yet both reason and life continue. There may be a loss of the external means and opportunities of salvation, or such a separation from them, as for ever to prevent our reaching it. And where there has been long and persistent resistance of grace, habitual suppression of religious convictions and feelings, wilful refusal to fulfil known duty, and persevering withstanding of the influences and impulses of the Spirit of God, there is not only a possibility, but great danger of bringing on a state of callous indifference, and incapacitation which puts the offender beyond the reach of salvation.
IV. THE TERMINATION OF THE DAY OF GRACE, WITHOUT HAVING SECURED THE BLESSING FOR WHICH IT WAS INTENDED, IS AN AWFUL CALAMITY. In the case of Jerusalem it brought tears and lamentations from the Son of God. (J. A. Seiss, D. D.)
The solicitude of Christ for incorrigible sinners
I. SPECIFY SOME OF THE MORE OBVIOUS CHARACTERISTICS OF INCORRIGIBLE MEN. There are several classes of people who, to say the least, are greatly exposed to unyielding impenitence, and who give fearful indication of final ruin.
1. This may be affirmed of men of a sceptical turn of mind. Such men are very apt never to become pious.
2. Another class of persons who are rarely made the subjects of grace are those of notoriously loose and vicious habits.
3. It may also be remarked, that men who are in the habit of making light of sacred things, and trifling with God, seldom become men of piety. If they can scoff at religion, if they can deride its conscientious disciples, there is little reason to believe they will ever become its disciples themselves.
4. In the same melancholy multitude are likewise found all those who are ardently and eagerly attached to the world.
5. There is another class of men who exhibit fearful symptoms of deep degeneracy, and they are those whose chosen companions are the guilty enemies of God and all righteousness. Men cannot habitually associate with those who are destitute of all moral principle, and have no fear of God before their eyes, without partaking of their character.
6. Those persons also give strong indications of being incorrigible, who have become hardened under religious privileges.
7. Still more hopeless are those who have outlived conviction, and resisted the Holy Spirit.
8. There is one class of persons more whose condition is as hopeless as that of any we have mentioned; I mean, the hypocrite and self-deceiver.
II. We proceed, in the second place, to inquire, WHAT THERE IS IN THE CONDITION OF SUCH PERSONS TO EXCITE THE SYMPATHY AND SOLICITUDE OF CHRIST.
1. Their determined rejection of offered mercy. This is like a dagger to Christ’s heart.
2. Their perversion of the means of grace.
3. Their utterly depraved character. And now, in conclusion, I cannot forbear remarking, in the first place, how unlike the Spirit of Christ is the apathy of the people of God in view of the perishing condition of impenitent men. Secondly, our subject strongly enforces, the importance of a diligent and anxious improvement of the day and means of salvation. Once more, in view of our subject, we may not avoid the inquiry, Are there none in this assembly towards whom the Saviour is now exercising the same tender compassion, which He exercised over incorrigible Jerusalem? I only add, in the last place, if such are the compassions of Christ towards guilty sinners, what confidence may we have that He will save all that come to Him. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Christ weeping over Jerusalem
I. WHY DID HE WEEP? It has been supposed that the picture of that approaching ruin and desolation which was coming so rapidly upon the unconscious capital, at once appalled and overwhelmed Him. He sketches that picture in strong and rapid strokes Himself (Luke 19:43-44). And that which added to it an element of profoundest gloom, was the unconsciousness of those whom such a doom was threatening. Scarce a soul in Jerusalem seems to have been greatly sensible either of the national decadence or of its own individual peril. Must it not have been this that made Him weep? I do not doubt that it was an element in that Divine and unmatched sorrow. But that sorrow loses its profoundest significance unless we see that it had another and deeper element still. What is it, that in the thought of a wise and good man costs him the deepest pang when he encounters the waywardness and wrong-doing of his own child? Is it merely that, as he looks forward, he sees the inevitable misery which that waywardness will entail? But you may be sure that such a parent is thinking of something else with a keener anguish still. He is thinking, “What must the nature be that is so insensible to love and duty and goodness!” He is thinking, “What are the moral sensibilities of one to whom baseness and ingratitude and wrong-doing are such easy and instinctive things!” He is thinking, “What have I to hope for from a child whose ruling impulse come out in deeds like these!” And even so, I think, it was with Christ. Nay, we are not left to our surmises. His own words tell us what made Him weep: “If thou thine eyes.” It was this spectacle of human insensibility, of eyes that would not see, and of ears that would not hear, that broke the Saviour down. The love of goodness, the longing for righteousness, the aspiration for nobleness and spiritual emancipation--these were dead in them. And it was this that made Christ weep.
II. And this brings me to that other question suggested by these tears of Christ. WHAT DID THEY MOVE HIM TO DO. Remember, that so far as the Jerusalem of that day was concerned, He Himself intimates the case to have been hopeless. And when that scornful indifference on their part was exchanged at last for a distinctive enmity, with that needless prodigality, as doubtless it seemed even to some of His own disciples, He flung away His life. Flung it away? Aye, but only how soon and how triumphantly to take it again! Such a history is pregnant with lessons for to-day. There are a good many of us, who from the elevation of a thoughtful observation, are looking down on the city in which we live. How fevered and faithless and morally insensible seem multitudes of those who live in it. How can such a one look down on all this and not weep? God forbid that such a spectacle should leave any one of us insensible or unmoved! But when that is said, let us not forget that with Christ weeping was but the prelude and forerunner of working. There were tears first, but then what heroic and untiring toil! I hear men say, no matter what good cause invites their cooperation, “It is of no use. Most men are bound to go to the devil; it is the part of wisdom to get out of the way and let them go as quickly as possible”; and I brand all such cries, no matter in what tones of complacent hopelessness they may utter themselves, as treason against God and slander against humanity. Faithlessness like this is a denial of God, and of goodness as well. And as such, it is an atheism with which no terms are to be made nor any truce to be kept. For, high above our blinded vision there sits One who, as He once wept over Jerusalem and then died for it, now lives for Jerusalem and for all His wayward children, and who bids us watch and strive with Him for those for whom once He shed His blood! And if He is still watching, even as once He wept over His creatures, God forbid that of any human soul you and I should quite despair! And therefore least of all our own souls. And so, while we weep, whether it be over the evil that is in others or in ourselves, our tears will be rainbows, bright with the promise of an immortal hope. Aye, far above the sorrows and the sins of the city that now is, we shall see the splendours of the New Jerusalem that is yet to be. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)
The sinner’s day
I. THAT THE SINNER HAS HIS DAY OF MERCY AND HOPE.
1. It is a period of light. Night is the season of darkness.
2. A period of activity. We must work now, or never.
3. An exceedingly limited period. “ A day.” But a step from cradle to tomb.
4. The present period is our day.
II. THIS DAY IS ACCOMPANIED WITH THINGS WHICH BELONG TO THE SINNER’S PEACE. By peace here we understand the welfare, the salvation of the sinner. The peace of God is the pledge and earnest of every blessing. Now, in this day we have--
1. The gracious provisions of peace. Christ has made peace by His cross, and before us is the cross lifted up.
2. The invitations and promises of peace belong to this day.
3. The means of obtaining peace belong to this day.
III. THAT IF THESE THINGS ARE NOT KNOWN NOW, IN THIS OUR DAY, THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HIDDEN FROM OUR EYES. Now observe--
1. The future state of the sinner is one of night. As such it is a period of darkness.
2. This state of night will be everlasting.
APPLICATION: We learn--
1. That the sinner’s present state is one of probation and mercy.
2. That God sincerely desires the salvation of souls.
3. That all who lose their souls do so by their own impenitency. (J. Burns, D. D.)
Christ’s lamentation over Jerusalem
I. THE EXHIBITION OF CHARACTER WHICH IT GIVES US. Here we perceive--
1. The Saviour’s deep interest in the state of man.
2. The Saviour’s compassion to the chief of sinners.
II. The sentiments it conveys.
1. That there are things belonging to a man’s peace which it becomes him to know.
2. That there is a day in which a man might know these things.
3. That if this day be wasted these things will be hidden from him. (Essex Remembrancer)
Three times in a nation’s history
These words, which rang the funeral knell of Jerusalem, tell out in our ears this day a solemn lesson; they tell us that in the history of nations, and also, it may be, in the personal history of individuals, there are three times--a time of grace, a time of blindness, and a time of judgment. This, then, is our subject--the three times in a nation’s history. When the Redeemer spake, it was for Jerusalem the time of blindness; the time of grace was past; that of judgment was to come.
I. THE TIME OF GRACE. We find it expressed here in three different modes: first, “in this thy day”; then, “the things which belong to thy peace”; and thirdly, “the time of thy visitation.” And from this we understand the meaning of a time of grace; it was Jerusalem’s time of opportunity. The time in which the Redeemer appeared was that in which faith was almost worn cut. He found men with their faces turned backward to the past, instead of forward to the future. They were as children clinging to the garments of a relation they have lost; life there was not, faith there was not--only the garments of a past belief. He found them groaning under the dominion of Rome; rising up against it, and thinking it their worst evil. The coldest hour of all the night is that which immediately precedes the dawn, and in that darkest hour of Jerusalem’s night her Light beamed forth; her Wisest and Greatest came in the midst of her, almost unknown, born under the law, to emancipate those who were groaning under the law. His life, the day of His preaching, was Jerusalem’s time of grace. During that time the Redeemer spake the things which belonged to her peace: but they rejected them and Him. Now, respecting this day of grace we have two remarks to make. First: In this advent of the Redeemer there was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. And just such as this is God’s visitation to us. Generally, the day of God’s visitation is not a day very remarkable outwardly. Bereavements, sorrows--no doubt in these God speaks; but there are other occasions far more quiet and unobtrusive, but which are yet plainly days of grace. A scruple which others do not see, a doubt coming into the mind respecting some views held sacred by the popular creed, a sense of heart loneliness and solitariness, a feeling of awful misgiving when the future lies open before us, the dread feeling of an eternal godlessness, for men who are living godless lives now--these silent moments unmarked, are the moments in which the Eternal is speaking to our souls. Once more: That day of Jerusalem’s visitation--her day of grace--was short. A lesson here also for us. A few actions often decide the destiny of individuals, because they give a destination and form to habits; they settle the tone and form of the mind from which there will be in this life no alteration. We say not that God never pleads a long time, but we say this, that sometimes God speaks to a nation or to a man but once. If not heard then, His voice is heard no more.
II. THE TIME OF BLINDNESS. If a man will not see, the law is he shall not see; if he will not do what is right when he knows the right, then right shall become to him wrong, and wrong shall seem to be right.
III. THE TIME OF JUDGMENT. It came in the way of natural consequences. We make a great mistake respecting judgments. God’s judgments are not arbitrary, but the results of natural laws. The historians tell us that Jerusalem owed her ruin to the fanaticism and obstinate blindness of her citizens; from all of which her Redeemer came to emancipate her. Had they understood, “Blessed are the boor in spirit,” “Blessed are the meek,” and “Blessed are the peacemakers”; had they understood that, Jerusalem’s day of rum might never have come. Is there no such thing as blindness among ourselves? May not this be OUT day of visitation? First, there is among us priestly blindness; the blindness of men who know not that the demands of this age are in advance of those that have gone before. Once more, we look at the blindness of men talking of intellectual enlightenment. It is true that we have more enlightened civilization and comfort. What then? Will that retard our day of judgment? Jerusalem was becoming more enlightened, and Rome was at its most civilized point, when the destroyer was at their gates. Therefore, let us know the day of our visitation. It is not the day of refinement, nor of political liberty, nor of advancing intellect. We must go again in the old, old way; we must return to simpler manners and to a purer life. We want more faith, more love. The life of Christ and the death of Christ must be made the law of our life. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The things belonging to our peace
I. THERE ARE THINGS WHICH BELONG TO OUR PEACE. Peace has a large signification; it implies not only the inward feeling of the mind, but generally our happiness and welfare. The things which belong to our peace are provided for us and pressed upon our acceptance in the Gospel of Christ. And this peace must be sought for personally by each one on his own behalf. But it concerns his everlasting peace that the sinner should undergo a change of heart.
II. THERE IS A TIME IN WHICH WE MAY SECURE THOSE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR OUR PEACE. Now is that time, and now is the only time. Of to-morrow neither you nor I are secure. Now is the time in which you may seek the Lord, and in which He will be found.
III. THERE IS A TIME WHEN THEY WILL BE FOR EVER HID FROM OUR EYES. There is such a thing as a hard and obdurate heart--there is such a state as final impenitence--there is such a calamitous condition as that of a lost soul. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)
Christ’s appeal to the heart
I. THIS THY DAY. The day of thy visitation, the day when God’s goodness and grace were especially near thee; the day of dawning hopes and bright promises; the day which, if it had been welcomed and used aright, might have coloured, ennobled, and redeemed all the rest. It was the day when, as youths, we left our father’s house to take our place in the busy world, when thoughts of duty and honour, of true work and faithful service, were fresh and strong in our breasts, when we were resolved, God helping us, there should be no idle hours, no corrupting habits, no dread secrets which could not be breathed or even thought of in the sanctity of the home, or in the presence of our sister or our mother. Or, it was the day when some heavenly vision of the beauty of goodness, of the sacredness of service, of the helpfulness of prayer, of the nearness of God to your innermost soul, filled your heart with its glow and peace, and you longed and vowed ever to cherish the kindly light, ever to obey the heavenly voice, ever to walk with God, and repose in Him. Or, it was the day when, after some sad fall, or after many reckless, wasted years, you came to yourself, you saw from the very edge the precipice to which you had come, you felt keenly and bitterly the misery of the shame into which you had sunk, and, for the first time, Christ’s vision of the face and heart of God, of the Father seeking the poor prodigal, brought penitence and hope; when thoughts of Christ, with His words of forgiveness and help and peace, seemed welcome and consoling to you, as rest at last to the sleep less brain, or kindly, gentle care to the fever-stricken patient.
II. IF THOU HADST KNOWN AT LEAST IN THIS THY DAY. ‘Tis one of the sorrows of life that we spend a lifetime in gaining the needful experience. “ Human experience,” says Coleridge, “ like the stern-lights of a ship at sea, too often only illuminates the faith we have passed over.” The youth does not know the value of the school till alter he has left it, or the comfort and charm of the home till it is broken up and he is alone in the world; the man does not know the value of time, or health, or money, or character, till harsh misfortune or his own fault have deprived him of them; we do not fully realize how much we needed the companionship, example, and sympathy of friends till death has snatched them from us. And so with spiritual blessings and opportunities.
III. THE THINGS THAT BELONG ONTO THY PEACE. The life of Christ in the heart. The service of our heavenly Father here and now. (J. T. Stannard.)
Our day of grace
As God dealt with the city of Jerusalem, so He deals with us as individuals. God has given us a day of grace-has given a time wherein to repent of sin and prepare for another world. This day and this period is circumscribed. It is, as it were, a circle described around us; and when we pass over that boundary., then the day of grace is past and gone; the spirit has ceased to strive, and our doom is fixed for ever. I will illustrate this from history. One of the kings of Syria made war upon Egypt, which was at that time an ally of the Roman republic. When the news reached the Roman senate, they despatched into Egypt two senators, one of whom was a dear friend of the king. They went direct to the camp of the Syrian monarch, who came forth to meet them; but the senator, refusing to recognize him as his friend, at once put him upon his choice--to raise the seige and withdraw his army out of Egypt, or to forfeit his friendly relation with Rome, who would at once send forth her legions and compel him. To this he endeavoured to give an equivocal answer: he would consider over it or he would consider of it at another time. But this was not enough for the Romans; the senator, therefore, with the wand he had in his hand, drew a circle around him on the sand where they stood, and demanded his answer and decision ere he left it. He had to make his choice: he decided to withdraw his army, and then the senator extended his hand and recognized his friend. In a similar way God has drawn a circle around us, and demands us to make a choice. That circle is our day of grace. May we, then, to-day, while it is called today, harden not our hearts, lest God should swear in His wrath we shall not enter into His rest! (A. Jones.)
“In this thy day”
Thy day! If when the sun sets in the west we were not sure whether he would rise on the morrow, oh what an evening it would be! ONE DAY! “Thy day!” How precious! But if the day is allowed to pass, and the work of the day not done, how terrible the sunset! Jerusalem had her day; the day was passing--it was past. Jerusalem did not know her day, and did not notice that it had passed. Jerusalem, with her day done, was laughing: Jesus, looking on lost Jerusalem, wept. This is not of private interpretation--it is written for our sakes. Our city has a day; ourselves have a day. Throughout this day it is peace--your peace--pressing like the air around us. The night cometh, when that light of life is gone. Men mistake the meaning of Emmanuel’s tenderness. It is not tenderness to sin, Men are tender to their own sin, treating it as a spoiled child--blaming it in words, but fondling it all the while; and they think that Christ will turn out such an one as themselves. His grief does not indicate a holding back, a hesitating to cast away the wicked. The earnestness with which the Redeemer strove to snatch the brand from the burning, shows that there is a burning for the brand. The tears He shed over Jerusalem do not prove that He will falter and hesitate to lay her even with the ground when her day is done: if He had thought that Jerusalem might escape in her sin, He would not have wept to see her sinning. No preachers are so terrible as the Redeemer’s tears. (W. Arnot.)
Too late
God forbid that any of you should at the last have the dismay of the Scotchwoman of whom I was reading. One night she could not sleep because of her soul’s wandering from Christ. She got up and wrote in her diary: “One year from now I will attend to the matters of my soul.” She retired, but could not sleep. So she arose again, and wrote a better promise in her diary: “One month from now I will attend to the matters of my soul.” She retired again, but found no sleep, and arose again and wrote: “Next week I will attend to the matters of my soul.” Then she slept soundly. The next day she went into scenes of gaiety. The following day she was sick, and the middle of next week she died. Delirium lifted from her mind just long enough for her to say: “I am a week too late. I am lost!” Oh, to be a year too late, or a month too late, or a week too late, or a day too late, or a minute too late, or a second too late, is to be for ever too late. May God Almighty, by His grace, keep us from the wild, awful, crushing catastrophe of a ruined soul. (Dr. Talmage.)
The time of the visitation
Knowing the time of our visitation
I. THE TIME OF OUR VISITATION.
1. The country which has given us birth. We are highly favoured in this respect. We enjoy religious freedom.
2. The dispensation under which we live. Full blaze of gospel sun.
3. The revelation which God has been pleased to give us of His will.
4. The ministry, by which the written Word is explained to the understanding and enforced on the conscience.
II. THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH TIMES OF VISITATION ARE GRANTED. They are granted for purposes of the highest consequence to every one of you.
1. First of all, to be instrumental in accomplishing the conversion of your hearts and lives to God.
2. This entire conversion of your hearts and lives to God, is the foundation of all Christian experience and all Christian practice.
3. And then, as to its final and ultimate object, this “time of visitation” looks forward to your everlasting salvation; for the work of religion is not only to be begun, and it is not only to be proceeded with, but it is likewise to be perfected.
III. OUR NEGLECT OF THESE OPPORTUNITIES. How is it that, notwithstanding we are all favoured with the means of salvation, and with many loud calls to secure the purposes for which they are given to us--how is it that so many amongst even you are as yet unsaved, and “know not the time of your visitation”?
1. I suppose that, in reference to some, it is in consequence of your perseverance in the practice of sin.
2. There are others who know net and do not improve “the time of their visitation,” by reason of their thoughtlessness and inattention to Divine things.
3. There is another reason to be assigned for your not knowing “the time of your visitation”--and that is, indecision and delay. “He that is not with Me,” said Christ, “is against Me.”
4. Then, let me say, further, that all those know not “the time of their visitation,” who, for any reason whatever, do not come to the Lord Jesus Christ to believe with their hearts unto righteousness.
5. Perhaps I ought to say, there are some who know not “the time of their visitation,” by reason of their inconstancy and negligence.
IV. In the last place, we ought to look a little at THE JUDGMENT WHICH, SOONER OR LATER, IS SURE TO OVERTAKE ALL THOSE WHO PERSIST IN DISREGARDING THEIR MEANS AND OPPORTUNITIES. (J. Bicknell.)
Divine visitations
The system of the natural world--with all its laws, facts, processes, and events; the system of social life, including the family and civil society; the system of business life, including all proper industries and right occupations, all rightful forms of development, all cares and labours--all these are included in the system of visitations which God employs in His daily education of men, and their treatment and control. In other words, God employs all the apparatus of the natural world, in its results both upon the body and the mind; all the social influences that surround and educate men; all the organizations by which man is drawn out in various industries, and becomes an operative and a creator; all the various events that transpire outside of the mind or its volition, which come up in what we call providences of God; and above all these, the direct gospel system, supervised by God’s personal Spirit. Through all these various influences, God acts upon the human soul; and all these are but parts of God’s one system, for the development, the education, and the elevation of men. The time of God’s visitations has included every period of our lives. They have not been special to youth, to middle life, or to old age. Not only has the Divine economy had respect to the faculties of the soul, but to man as a creature. For example, there are times--and the element of time has entered largely into the system of Divine culture--when they have met us in childhood, with influences appropriate to that period, acting through the easier affections and susceptibilities of early life. I do not believe that there is a man in this house, who, if he were to speak his experience, would not say, “I was subject in my boyhood to times of religious depression.” They say “depression,” though they should rather say religious inspiration and elevation. These were awakenings by which they were lifted up from the dull and the obscure of life, and made to feel something of the invisible, and of the power of the world to come. And as childhood goes into boyhood or early manhood, the Divine strivings do not cease. They may change their form; they may cease to act through the same susceptibilities; they may take hold through the developments of the understanding, the speculations of a man’s reason, or a different and larger reach of the imagination; but, nevertheless, they take hold still in early manhood and middle life. God’s visitations of mercy not only include every one of the faculties of the human soul, and all the periods of time in which a man lives, but are made to act upon men through every gradation and variation of their condition and history. In other words, we are tried in every possible development of our physical state. We are tried by our disappointments; we are tried by our successes! God heaps mercies upon men, and then takes them all away! He blesses, enriches, and establishes men, and then shuts them up, impoverishes, and subverts them! It is remarkable, in respect to these visitations of God, that they do not follow the telescope; they are rather like comets, that come when they please; for when you search for God, “by searching you cannot find Him out.” Such thoughts have come to you unbidden, sometimes in your counting-room, or when you were on a journey, or on the sea; sometimes when you have been in your house all alone, your family in the country; sometimes in trouble and adversity; in various ways--often coming, though never twice alike, as if the Divine phases had sought to present, at different times, different aspects to you. And if, all the way along, you had treasured up these times--precious times of great treasure!--if you had treasured them as you have when you have made a good bargain, or gained a new honour; if you had treasured all these interior peculiarities as you have the exterior--you would find them, I think, almost within speaking distance all the way from childhood to manhood; and although you had never such a consecutive view of the whole, yet really all along you have been subject to such impressions! Under such visitations there is brought very near to men such a thought of the other life, of God’s eternal kingdom and their immortality in it, as may produce very serious practical fruits in them. In view of these facts and illustrations of facts, I remark in closing, first, upon the immensity of the influences which men receive for good--the disproportion in this world between the educating influences for good, and those which sometimes we suspect are for evil. For we are apt to think that this great world is all against goodness, and that men are surrounded by such inducements to evil, such temptations of their passions, that there is an impression that man is so neglected and so set upon at disadvantage, that there is scarcely the evidence of his ever being an object of mercy. Contrariwise, it is a truth that man stands in the midst of a world which is one peculiar and complex educating institution, and what is more, educating in the right direction. The gradual growing effect of the course that I have been speaking of, is worthy of a moment’s attention--the habit of thus resisting the visitation of God’s Spirit upon us. What is the result of having a visitation, and of neglecting it? The general apprehension is, that it offends God, and that man is destroyed vindictively, or penally; but we must look at it more narrowly than that. In the first place, then, I think that it is in respect to our moral susceptibilities as it is in regard to all our senses; they become blunted by repeated perversion. A man can treat his eye in such a way that he shall become blind. He can blunt his hearing so that he shall become deaf. He can injure his tongue so as to have no appreciation of flavours. He can conduct himself so that his whole body may be broken down and destroyed before he is fifty years old. So in respect to a man’s moral nature. A man’s moral susceptibilities may be so dull, that by the time he is fifty years old, these approaches no longer affect him in this world. Anal the effect is, the gradual diminution of moral susceptibility; so that the conjunctions of circumstances, by which the man shall appear to himself to be surrounded, are less and less frequent, because their effect is less and less apparent. What is the state of such a man? What a terrible condition it is for a man to stand in! Ah! when the day of visitation is passed, what has happened?--not alone in those extreme cases, of men who are hardened past all shame and feeling; but what has happened in other cases, where men are not so incorrigible, and not so hard? Is God so angry at them that He ceases to offer them any more mercy? Does He pass them altogether by? Not at all! Oh, the goodness of God! There is just as much summer in the deserts of Arabia as in our American prairies! The sun and the showers of summer are in both places: but it is a desert in one, and it is a growing, luxuriant prairie in the other. There is just as much summer for a sepulchre as there is for a mansion; but the summer sun brings joy and cheer to those in the populous house, where the father and the mother are happy, and all the children are full of glee and joy; while, as it shines upon the sepulchre’s roof, everything is solitary, sad, and still, because there are dead men’s bones within, which the sunlight can never waken! It is just the same in the moral government of God. There is the same provision of light, of air, of warmth, of raiment, in immense abundance; but all these are conjoined with this one invariable, universal necessity--our own appropriation of them. There is unlimited store of good, yet men will starve if they do not appropriate it to themselves. There is an ocean of air, yet men will suffocate if they refuse to breathe. He is resolute for evil. He has been surrounded by Divine influences, but he has continually resisted them, until he has been hardened by the process--until moral susceptibility has died out of him--until he has disorganized his nature--until he has destroyed himself! And when he passes through the brief period of his life--through its rapid rolling months and years--and rises into the presence of God, he stands in condemnation! Then he will not be able to say one word! The long procession of God’s teachings, which were given to draw him away from his immorality; all the Divine influences that have been visited upon him; all these things will then stand out unmistakably and indisputably; and the man will have nothing to say, except this--“I destroyed myself!” (H. W. Beecher.)
Times of visitation
1. And first, I would ask you to go back to the period of your youth. Was not that a “time of visitation?” Do you not remember its freshness, its freedom, its joy?
2. Again: I may speak of those special Divine influences which arc often realized in connection with the services of the sanctuary, and the preaching of God’s Word, as constituting “a time of visitation.”
3. Yet again: there are “times of visitation,” in which the individual is more directly concerned, as separate from all around him. It may be in the church, or it may be at home in the quiet chamber, or it may be in neither, but out under the great dome of heaven, and among the scenes of nature.
4. Once more: there are providential events which may be regarded in the light of a “time of visitation” to those concerned in them. (C. M. Merry.)
The time of visitation
I. WHAT IS A DIVINE VISITATION?
1. The common use of the word associates it with judgment, with judicial infliction of punishment of some sort.
2. Divine visitations are often connected with the purpose of blessing.
3. God visits us, in giving us the fruits of the earth in due season.
4. Visitation means warning. It is in this sense our Lord here describes His own ministry as the “visitation” of Jerusalem. Partly, no doubt, it was a visitation of judgment, yet more was it a visitation of blessing; it brought with it instruction, grace, pardon. His visitation was also a warning against some besetting sins of a very old and settled religion--against formalism, hypocrisy, insincere use of sacred language, insincere performance of sacred duties; and it was especially a warning to the people of Israel, against their taking a wrong turn in their thoughts and aspirations and efforts in the future before them.
II. WHY SHOULD THE FAILURE TO KNOW THE TIME OF VISITATION VERY OFTEN BE FOLLOWED BY SUCH GREAT CONSEQUENCES?
1. Because such failure implies the decline of spiritual interest, which in those who have had any religious training and opportunities is culpable. To believe sincerely in the living God, who interests Himself in His mortal creatures, is to be on the look-out for tokens of His intervention in the affairs of men; in other words, for His visitations. When a Divine visitation comes, it is a touchstone of the interests of souls: it finds some anxious, expectant, willing to recognize and make the most of it, and others, as our Lord said, whose hearts have waxed gross, and whose ears are dull of hearing, and whose eyes are closed. This insensibility to the approach of God in His life and power wounds the heart of God. We cannot forsake Him for anything else with impunity.
2. If God visits in warning, then to neglect His visitation is to neglect conditions of safety against dangers which are before us” So it was now with the Jews. If the Jews had given heed to the teaching of our Saviour the conflict with the Roman authority would never have taken place.
III. THE DIFFICULTY FOR MANY MEN IS TO RECOGNIZE AT THE CRITICAL MOMENT THE FACT THAT GOD IS VISITING THEM. The most vitally important days and weeks in the history of a soul may have little to distinguish them outwardly from other days. It needs the earnest, penetrating recognition of God’s unceasing and loving interest in His creatures to read life aright, whether it be corporate or individual life, to see the moral and spiritual worth of events. It may be said that there is room for a great deal of illusion in this matter of Divine visitation. “We may easily think ourselves more important people than we are; we may imagine that the events of our little lives have a meaning and worth which does not belong to them. Is there any test or criterion of His visitation?” Well, we have first of all to remember that no human life at any moment is other than an object of the deepest interest to God. He who made, He who redeemed, He who sanctified us, does not think any life too insignificant to be visited by Him. The hairs of your head are all numbered; it is impossible that the Infinite Love should ever despise the work of His own hands, the purchase of His own cross. The only question is, whether we are warranted in thinking that His interest and oversight have at a given time reached a special climax or visitation, having exceptional claims on our attention; and we are justified in thinking that this is the case if the truth which such a visitation enforces is in correspondence with the higher truth which we have learned before, though, perhaps, going beyond it, and if the conduct to which we are impelled or encouraged involves self-denial, involves that which is unwelcome or exacting. (Canon Liddon.)
Divine visitations
1. God visits a nation, when at a critical moment in its history He bids it maintain some imperilled principle, or do some great act of justice. Perhaps the opportunity has been neglected; it passes, and then the sentence of national decline is written on the pale of history, with the added reason: “Because thou knowest not,” etc.
2. God visits at His own time the several branches of His Church, it may be after long years of apathy and darkness. He visits a church when He raises up in her teachers who insist upon forgotten aspects of truth, who call men from false standards of life; or when He opens great ways of extending His people and of influencing numbers of human beings to seek the things that belong to their peace. If this invitation to better things is set aside, nominally as ii it were the revival of some old superstition, but rather really because it makes an unwelcome demand on the conscience and the will, then the day of visitation passes, and the doom of the church which comes in time is justified in the conscience of its own children: “Because,” etc.
3. Souls are the units of which nations and churches are composed, and God visits a soul when He brings before it a new range of opportunities. One of yourselves, we will say, has been for years recognizing just so much of religious truth as the people about him, and no more; acting just so far upon the duties which it suggests, and no further; your thought and practice are, as we say, conventional--that is to say, they are determined by the average feeling of those among whom you are thrown in life, and not by any personal sense or grasp of religious principle, of what religious principle is, of what is due to it, of what is due to the Infinite and Everlasting God. And then something occurs which appeals to the soul as nothing has appealed to it before, which puts life, destiny and duty, truth, Holy Scripture, the Cross of Christ, the Person of Christ, the garments of Christ, the Church of Christ, before it in quite a new light. It may be a sentence in a letter: it may be a sudden thought which takes possession of you at the time of prayer; it may be a friend who insists on duties which have hitherto been mere phrases to you; it may be that you suddenly find yourself obliged to decide between two courses--one involving sacrifice more or less painful, and the other the surrender of something which your conscience tells you is right and true, and the having to make a decision puts a strain on your moral being, which is of itself a visitation. Or, one who has been intimately associated with you for many years has died; his death has taught you the emptiness of this passing life, it has put you out of heart with the half-hearted religion of past years; in short, this trial, while it presses heavily on your heart, has gone far to make you quite other than what you were. And this is a visitation. God is speaking to your soul, and much depends on your under standing Him, on your resolving and acting and re-fashioning your life accordingly. Much, I say, depends on this; for be sure that it is very serious to have enjoyed such a religious opportunity and to have neglected it. Divine visitation does not leave us where it found us; it always leaves us better or worse. To have been in contact with truth and grace, and to have put it from us, is to be weaker, poorer, worse off--religiously speaking--than we were. When the Divine visitation of the soul has been rejected, then the day of its enemies has arrived; then the legions of hell encamp all around it, the powers of darkness make sure of their victim. There is such a thing as the last chance in the life of a soul. God knows when it has passed by each of us, but one day certainly all of us do, in whatever way, pass it. (Canon Liddon.)
The visitation of Jerusalem
1. This visitation of Jerusalem by its Monarch was unobtrusive. There was nothing of outward pageantry or of royalty to greet the Son of David; there was no royal livery, no currency bearing the king’s image and superscription--all these things had passed into the hands of a foreign conqueror, or in parts of the country, into the hands of princes who had the symbol of independence without its reality. There was not even the amount of circumstance of state which attends the reception of a visitor to some modern institution--a visitor who only represents the majesty of some old prerogative or some earthly throne. As Israel’s true King visits Jerusalem He always reminds us of a descendant of an ancient family returning in secret to the old home of his race; everything is for him instinct with precious memories; every stone is dear to him, while he himself is forgotten. He wanders about unnoticed, unobserved, or with only such notice as courtesy may accord to a presumed stranger. He is living amid thoughts which arc altogether unshared by the men whom he meets as he moves silently and sadly among the records of the past, and he passes away from sight as he came, with his real station and character generally unrecognized, if, indeed, he is not dismissed as an upstart with contempt and insult. So it was with Jerusalem and its Divine Master. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. It may, indeed, be asked whether the unobtrusive character of His visit does not excuse the ignorance of Jerusalem. But, my brethren, there is ignorance and ignorance. There is the ignorance which we cannot help, which is part of our circumstances in this life, which is imposed on us by Providence, and such ignorance as this, so far as it extends, does efface responsibility. God will never hold a man accountable for knowledge which God knows to be out of his reach; but there is also ignorance, and a great deal of it, in many lives for which we are ourselves responsible, and which would not have embarrassed us now if we had made the best of our opportunities in past times, and just as a man who, being drunk, commits a street outrage is held to be responsible for the outrage which he commits without knowing what he is doing, because he is undoubtedly responsible for getting into this condition of brutal insensibility, so God holds us all to be accountable for an ignorance which He knows to be due to our own neglect. Now this was the case with the men of Jerusalem at that day. Had they studied their prophets earnestly and sincerely, had they refused to surrender themselves to political dreams which flattered their self-love and which coloured all their thoughts and hopes, they would have seen in Jesus of Nazareth the Divine Visitor whose coming Israel had for long ages been expecting. As it was, His approach was too unobtrusive for a generation which looked forward to a visible triumph. Thus they knew not the time of their visitation. And the visitation of Jerusalem was final; it was not to be repeated. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers of the Jewish race by the prophets, in these last days spoke unto them by His Son. Those were His last words to His chosen people, the last probation, the last opportunity; we may reverently say that there was no more after that to be done. Each prophet had contributed something which others could not; each had filled a place in the long series of visitations which no other could fill. Already Jerusalem had been long since once destroyed after a great neglected opportunity. The Book of Jeremiah which we have lately been reading in the daily lessons, is one long and pathetic commentary on the blindness and obstinacy of kings, priests, prophets, and people who preceded the Chaldean invasion, and who rendered it inevitable. And still that ruin, vast, and for the time being, utter as it was, had been followed by a reconstruction, that long and bitter exile by a return. But history will not go on for ever repeating events which contradict probability. One greater visitation awaited Jerusalem, one more utter ruin, and each was to be the last. “Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” What is the explanation of that “because”? What is the connection as between cause and affect which it suggests? Does it mean merely that the Jews, having as a people rejected Christ, were punished by the destruction of their city and temple, but that nothing further can be said about it? That the punishment was independent of the crime, although not excessive, and that it might just as easily as not have been something else than what it was, since the punishment was inflicted from without by the Roman army, which, consisting as it did of brave and disciplined pagans, could have no ideas about the spiritual history or responsibilities of a distant Asiatic race? No, brethren; this is not the full or the true account of the case. Here, as elsewhere, God works by laws which we may trace and which are not generally superseded by agencies of a different character. Jerusalem’s ignorance of its visitation by the King Messiah, had a great deal to do as cause with effect with Jerusalem’s ruin. What was the main cause of that ruin? It was, as has been said, that the Jews were under the influence of a false and blind prejudice and ambition. They had made up their minds that their Messiah was to be a political rather than a spiritual king; He was to make Jerusalem the centre of an empire which would hold its own against the legions of Rome; and with this overmastering prejudice in their minds the Jews could not recognize the real Messiah when He came, and the day of their visitation escaped them. Yet it was this same political phrenzy of theirs which ultimately brought them into trouble with the Roman power; and if they had only understood the real meanings of their prejudices, had seen in their Messiah a spiritual monarch, and had accepted Him when He came, the mind of the people would have taken, must have taken, a totally different direction, and the fatal collision with the forces of Rome would never have taken place. (Canon Liddon.)
Illness regarded as God’s visitation
There are two ways of looking at an illness. We may trace it to its second or immediate cause, the infection, the blood-poisoning, the imprudence, the hereditary taint, and there stop; or we may with greater reason look up to Him who is the true Lord of all, the first cause, and who worketh all things by the counsel of His own will; and if we do this last, we must see in an illness a visitation from God. He knows what we want. He sees, it may be, that in us which will never be corrected in the days of rude health and of high spirits; He sees the insensibility to the seriousness of life, to the claims of others, to the true interests of the soul, to the unfathomable love of the Divine Redeemer; and an illness which gives time for prayer, for reflection, for resolution, is a school of discipline. Those who have never had bad health are, it has been truly said, objects of anxiety; those who have had it, and who are none the better for it, are certainly objects of the very deepest concern and compassion. There was a story told many years since of a boat which was getting near the rapids above the Falls of Niagara. The boatmen managed to reach the shore, but, disregarding the advice which was earnestly given them, they put out again into the stream, with the object of crossing to the opposite bank. The current proved too strong for them, and those who had warned them of their danger looked on with a distress which was too great for words while the boat glided down with an ever-increasing speed to the edge of the falls. It is possible, brethren, in what concerns another life, to be in that condition, to have ignored God’s last word of warning, and to be hurrying onwards, under the stress of influences which we cannot any longer resist or control, towards the awful future. Great reason is there for prayer, that at the critical turning-point of our career we may have, in our Lord’s words, eyes to see and ears to hear, that we may distinguish God’s visitations in life from what is ordinary in it; that we may remember that in every life, even in the most highly favoured, there is sooner or later a visitation which is the last. (Canon Liddon.)
Guilty ignorance
Well-known as these words are, there is in them something, when we think of it, unexpected; something different, apparently, from what we should have looked for. The condemnation of the people seems to be put upon a cause somewhat unlike what we might have thought. The Lord does not say, it is because ye are about to crucify the Lord of Glory; or, because ye have been a sinful and stiff-necked people; or, because by your traditions ye have made the Word of God of none effect; or, because ye are hypocrites, or impenitent: though all these things, and many more, were not only true against the people, but had often been alleged by Himself to their condemnation. He does not, I say, allege any of these broad, overt, intelligible sins in this, the last most solemn, irreversible denunciation of their judgment; but He says, “Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation!” God had visited His people, and they knew it not I He had come unto His own, and His own had known Him not He does not even say, that they had pretended not to know Him; but, literally and plainly, that they knew Him not. They might have known Him; they ought to have known Him; but He came, and they knew Him not. Let us learn, then, that men may really be quite ignorant of what they are doing, and yet very guilty, and involved in the heaviest condemnation. But, again, are we to suppose that they did not choose to know; that they might, then and there, by a stronger exercise of will, by some more forcible or candid purpose, have known what they thus wilfully were ignorant of? It is possible that they might; but it is by no means certain: that is, it is by no means certain that much disobedience, much inattention to the constant indications of God’s will vouchsafed to them, much neglect of opportunities, had not set them so much out of the way of forming right judgments on such things, as to make it morally impossible, or, at least, in the highest degree unlikely, that they should come to a right knowledge of the nature of our Lord and the sacredness of His mission. No doubt they had, if we may so speak, a great deal to say for themselves, in their firm and persevering rejection of our Lord and His doctrine; not, indeed, a word of real weight or truth, but a great deal which, urged by men in their state of mind, and addressed to men of their state of mind, would appear to be full of force and cogency. Would they not, feeling no doubt of the sacred validity of their own traditions, look upon Him and describe Him as one who made light of the authority of God, and of Moses, and the ancients? May we not easily suppose with what immense effect they would urge the impolicy of giving any heed to our Lord’s teaching: the impolicy in respect of the Romans; the impolicy in respect of the great impediment which would, by our Lord’s partial success, be thrown in the way of the true, temporal Messias, so long expected? If we suppose that the actions, which we criticize, appeared to the persons who were about to perform them in the same clear and unquestionable light in which we see them, we at once lose, or rather turn into mischief and hurt, the historical examples: we do exactly what the Jews did, when they said, “If we had lived in the times of our fathers, we would not have been partakers in their deeds,” and yet filled up the measure of those very fathers, by doing a deed precisely like theirs in kind, though infinitely worse than theirs in degree. We comfort ourselves by condemning them, while we exactly imitate, or even exceed their sins. We, like them--like all mankind--are perpetually called upon to act; often suddenly--often in cases ofgreat and obvious consequence--often in cases apparently slight, but really of most serious and vital importance to us: the same per plexities and bewilderments as I just described, of feeling, of policy, of liberality and candour, of conscience, of foreseen consequences, rise up around us; we act in more or less uncertainty of mind, but our uncertainties often woefully aggravated by our previous misconduct; and there are many to excuse us, many to encourage us, many to take part with us, and yet, in the sight of God, our act is one, it may be, of clear and undoubted sin. But again, the particular thing of which the Jews were in this instance ignorant, was the visitation of God. Christ had come to them, God had visited His people; and they, blinded by all these various kinds of self-deceit, of long continued disobedience, of inveterate hardness of heart, and neglect of lesser indications of God’s will and presence, had not known Him. Now here again is matter of high concern and warning to us all. For we, too, have our visitations of God; if not exactly such as this great one of Christ coming actually in the flesh, for us to worship or to crucify, according as our hearts recognize and know Him, or disown and rebel against Him, yet visitations many, various, and secret. But it by no means follows that we have known them. Some, indeed, may have been so striking as not to be mistaken. But many, perhaps most, perhaps the most searching and important, may have been absolutely unknown to us. And not less than this seems to be plainly taught by our Lord, where, in the 25th of St. Matthew, He describes the actual scene of judgment. The righteous and the wicked alike seem to be amazed to hear of the matters alleged for their acquittal and condemnation. How unexpected, then, may be to us the voice of judgment! (Bishop Moberly.)