Can we sympathize in any respect with such exalted tears? Do we mourn for sin, our _own_ sin--the deep insult which it inflicts on God--the ruinous consequences it entails on ourselves? Do we grieve at sin in _others_? Do we know any thing of "vexing our souls," like righteous Lot, "from day to day," with the world's "unlawful deeds," the stupid hardness and obduracy of the depraved heart, which resists alike the appliances of wrath and love, judgment and mercy? Ah! it is easy, in general terms, to condemn vice, and to utter harsh, severe, and cutting denunciations on the guilty: it is easy to pass uncharitable comments on the inconsistencies or follies of others: but to "_grieve_" as our Lord did, is a different thing; to mourn over the hardness of heart, and yet to have the burning desire to teach it better things; to hate, as He did, the sin, but, like Him also, to love the _sinner_! Reader! look specially to your own spirit. In one respect, the example of Jesus falls short of your case. He had no sin of His own to mourn over. He could only commiserate others. _Your_ intensest grief must begin with _yourself_. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Grieve for a perishing world--a groaning creation fettered and chained in unwilling "subjection to vanity." Do what you can, by effort, by prayer, to hasten on the hour of jubilee, when its ashy robes of sin and sorrow shall be laid aside, and, attired in the "beauties of holiness," it shall exult in "the glorious liberty of the sons of God!" "ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND." Seventeenth Day. HUMILITY. "He riseth from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel and girded Himself. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet."--John, xiii. 4, 5. What a matchless picture of humility! At the very moment when His throne was in view; angel-anthems floating in His ear; the hour come "when He was to depart out of this world;" possessing a lofty consciousness of His peerless dignity, that "He came _from_ God and went _to_ God;" THEN "Jesus took a towel, and girded Himself, and began to wash the disciples' feet!" All heaven was ready at that moment to cast their combined crowns at His feet. But the High and the Lofty One, inhabiting eternity, is on earth "as one that serveth!" "That _infinite stoop_! it sinks all creature humiliation to nothing, and renders it impossible for a creature to _humble_ himself."--(_Evans_).