man He longed for His brother's sympathy, and how as a holy Saviour He
longed for His brother's good. Remember how earnestly He sought for
the one grand result, that of hearty confidence in His goodwill, as
the only restorative of humanity fallen and in ruins through the curse
of unbelief. Remember, too, how lonely He was in the world; how
few understood Him in any degree, or responded even feebly to the
constant, boundless outpouring of His affection; and how many returned
His good with evil, His love with bitterest hate;--remember all
this, and conceive if you can what His feelings must have been when
returning to this home of His heart, to this green spot amidst the
wilderness of hateful distrust, with His whole soul full of such
glorious purposes of love and self-sacrifice, and then at such a
time to find his best and dearest friends smitten with the universal
blight, fallen to the earth and prostrate in the dust under the
crushing burden of unbelief! He does not weep, at first, when Martha
addresses him; but when Mary, the loving and confiding--she of all on
earth--complains; when faith has failed in even her!--oh, it is too
much for His heart! "And thou too!"--"Jesus wept!" Ah! that shadow of
death in such a soul as this was infinitely sadder to Him than the
dead body of her brother, nay, than the contents of all the festering
graveyards of the world! For what is death to sin? and what is the
power which can restore by a word the dead body to life, in comparison
with that which is required to restore an unbelieving soul to God? It
was this unbelief, the most terrible spectacle which earth presents to
the eye of a holy and loving Saviour, that made Him weep as He beheld
it for a moment, like a demon-power taking possession of His own best
beloved. And it was this same essential evil, and this alone, which
made Him weep once again as He entered Jerusalem, when He cried, "How
often would I have gathered you, but ye would not!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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