But, above all, let us learn to look on Jesus as one whom _we_ have pierced, and who has purchased our ransom from eternal death by sorrows and sacrifices which neither time nor eternity will enable us to estimate aright. Let us put ourselves in the place of those charged with the bloody deed, when they reflected that they had sacrificed an innocent being. Suppose that you had been consenting to His death. Suppose you had been the cause of it. Suppose his murderers had only been agents employed by you. Then your resentment will operate nearer home, and your grief will rend your own heart. And this, brethren, is the only true repentance. By faith the sinner perceives his own blood guiltiness in this cruel tragedy, and “looking upon Him whom he has pierced, he mourns for him.” (Zech. xii. 10.) No; you cannot learn the true evil of sin and your own lost condition because of it, but by considering and laying to heart the cross and passion, the precious death and burial, of your Lord and Saviour. Many think that sin is but a light thing; but hear Him, in whom _was no sin_ and who _did no sin_, saying, in the anguish of a wounded spirit “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” See Him “sore amazed and very heavy;” behold “His sweat as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” No; you cannot otherwise learn what a dreadful evil sin is—you cannot trifle with it—you cannot be reconciled to it—when you see the agonies of Him who “made His soul an offering for” it, and became a curse on account of it. In the ancient history we read that the citizens of Rome, when they beheld the mangled body and the gory mantle of Cæsar, rushed forth in fury to be avenged upon his murderers. So will the heart of every true believer, when he sees the wounds of Jesus, be stirred up to mutiny and rage—against himself, against those sins which caused the shedding of that innocent blood. And such emotions best become this solemn time. The language of this sad event is this—“Scarcely for a righteous man will one die, peradventure for a _good man_ some would even dare to die, but God commendeth His love to us, in that _while we were yet sinners_ Christ died for us.” Come, then, to the hallowed scene of Immanuel’s death. Come, and anoint His body with tears of godly sorrow, and swathe it in the fine linen of undissembled love. If David, in that most plaintive of all elegies, could say over the slaughtered bodies of Saul and Jonathan, “Weep, O daughters of Jerusalem, over Saul who clothed you in scarlet, and put ornaments of gold upon your apparel,” much more may we say, “Weep, ye believers in Jesus, weep over the King of Salem, who clothes you with righteousness and crowns you with salvation.”