The Compassion of Christ.
JESUS wept over the woes of a single city; and do you think that he never wept over the woes of a world? He wept in public, where he would certainly restrain his feelings as much as possible; and do you think he never wept in secret? Could we lift the sacred veil of his solitary hours, of his seasons of retirement, while an obscure workman of Nazareth; of his forty days' fasting and prayer in the wilderness; of his vigils on the mountain tops and in the deserts—what prayers, what intercessions, what tears, what tender and heavenly sympathies with the sorrows and woes of humanity, would come to light! His affections were not limited to Judea; he did not love those merely who loved him. He wept at the grave of Lazarus and over the distress of Martha and Mary; and why not over the great congregation of the dead of more than a hundred and thirty generations past, and over all the broken hearts of widows and starving orphans from the beginning of the world? why not over the distress of all the sick, the delirium of the deranged, the agonies of the dying? Do you now see why he went about with restless assiduity to console, to comfort, to bind up broken hearts, raising the dead, curing and cleansing and restoring men to the enjoyment of health, sight, hearing, and reason? How could he do otherwise with a heart like his? He would have done so, though no man had believed in him on that account, or returned to him a grateful word or look.—Thompson.