It is on this day of high communion that the God of pardon speaks to you with peculiar tenderness and peculiar solemnity; and as he looks to the dying cross, and the empty sepulchre, and the glorious throne of his Son, the substitute and sacrifice, He says, "Come now and let us reason together; and though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be like crimson, they shall be as wool." Amen.

SERMON XIII.

"And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it." -Luke xix. 41.

THESE, brethren, are very tender, yet very terrible words. They open up to us ideas, in dwelling upon which the soul is overpowered by conflicting emotions, and is constrained, in silence, to adore. Twice only is it expressly recorded in the gospels that He shed tears who fills the heaven of heavens with all its joys; but on both occasions we discover, along with the sympathy of the man, the power and omniscience of the God. Over the grave of Lazarus he wept, but it was when he was about to make that grave deliver up its dead. And when is it that he weeps over Jerusalem? Is it when its inhabitants are dragging him to the hall of judgment? Is it when they are mocking and scourging him? Or, is it when they are leading him forth from the city to Calvary-the hill of ignominy and death? No, it is just when they are in the act of escorting him in triumphal procession into the city as his own royal metropolis. It is when they are strewing the way with palm-branches in token of their Monarch's victory, and are spreading their garments in the way in token of their humble allegiance to his government. It is when the whole

multitude are rejoicing and praising God for all the mighty works they had seen, and are crying "Hosanna! blessed is the King of Israel! blessed be the kingdom of our Father that cometh in the name of the Lord!” It is when the entire city, with one loud but accordant voice, is saying, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest;" and when another and yet another shout is heard, “ Hosanna in the highest!” then it is that, when he comes near, he looks on the city and weeps over it.

Some worldly wise men may assign as the cause of this sudden burst of grief, that Jesus well knew how fickle and capricious is popular applause, and how quickly it may be changed into indifference, if not into hatred and contempt, and that he foresaw this would actually happen in his own case—that the very individuals who now rent the air with their acclamations would soon cry with equal vehemence, “Crucify. him, crucify him!" that in a few days he would be led forth through the gate he was now triumphantly entering, loaded with execrations, to perish on yonder mount, as an outcast from the society of men; and that it was the thought of all this contumelious treatment and base ingratitude which melted the Redeemer into tears. But that, surely, will by no means account for the affecting incident which is here narrated; nor is it necessary to have recourse to any such supposition, seeing that the real reason of the Saviour's emotion is expressly assigned by himself in the subsequent verses. In weeping over the city, he said with broken smothered sobs, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things concerning thy peace, but now are they hid from thine eyes. For there shall come days upon thee, (i. e. many days

of lengthened vengeance, because thou hast not improved thy one day of merciful visitation and offered peace,) many days of trouble, because thou hast not improved thy one day of grace. And thine enemies shall throw round thee a rampart, and shall encircle thee, and hem thee in on all sides, and shall level with the ground both thee and thy children within thee, and shall not leave upon thee one stone upon another, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation, i.e., the time of my gracious presence, when I came to visit and save thee."

You see, then, that what called forth the Redeemer's tears was the prospect of the dreadful doom that hung over his guilty but beloved Jerusalem. He saw her walls, surrounded with the intrenchments of a foreign enemy, and hurled to the ground. He saw her towers and palaces demolished, and her venerated temple, so long sacred to the name of Jehovah, razed to its foundation. He saw the famine, and the pestilence, and the civil warfare within, joining with the Roman armies from without in destroying thousands and tens of thousands of her inhabitants, so as to threaten the chosen seed with utter extinction. In short, he beheld, in prophetic vision, that scene which has been described in all its horrors by an eyewitness, Josephus, a scene such as had never before been witnessed by mortal eyes, and such as has never since been recorded in the history of miserable man. And at the thought of all this, need we wonder that he should weep-to whom Jerusalem was so dear that he took pleasure in her stones and favoured her very dust?

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multitude are rejoicing and praising God for all the mighty works they had seen, and are crying "Hosanna! blessed is the King of Israel! blessed be the kingdom of our Father that cometh in the name of the Lord!” It is when the entire city, with one loud but accordant voice, is saying, “Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest ;" and when another and yet another shout is heard, "Hosanna in the highest!" then it is that, when he comes near, he looks on the city and weeps over it.

Some worldly wise men may assign as the cause of this sudden burst of grief, that Jesus well knew how fickle and capricious is popular applause, and how quickly it may be changed into indifference, if not into hatred and contempt, and that he foresaw this would actually happen in his own case—that the very individuals who now rent the air with their acclamations would soon cry with equal vehemence, “Crucify. him, crucify him!" that in a few days he would be led forth through the gate he was now triumphantly entering, loaded with execrations, to perish on yonder mount, as an outcast from the society of men; and that it was the thought of all this contumelious treatment and base ingratitude which melted the Redeemer into tears. But that, surely, will by no means account for the affecting incident which is here narrated; nor is it necessary to have recourse to any such supposition, seeing that the real reason of the Saviour's emotion is expressly assigned by himself in the subsequent verses. In weeping over the city, he said with broken smothered sobs, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things concerning thy peace, but now are they hid from thine eyes. For there shall come days upon thee, (i. e. many days