October 4

"Jesus wept."—John 11:35.

I THANK the Evangelist for a sentence so brief and so full.

I feel the alluring power of Christ's tears. When my heart is overwhelmed, when my sins testify against me, when I am afraid of the frown of high and holy Heaven, here is a God loving and pitiful, standing with me where I stand, weeping with me when I weep. I should not flee from Him. I should be drawn towards Him.

I am glad, too, for the wide range of Christ's tears. At Bethany He wept for a friend loved and lost; and on Olivet, I remember, He wept for a great city doomed to death. He bends over me, forlorn, heartbroken, stricken, in measureless grace; He takes thought, also, for the perishing masses of men. I praise Him that His tenderness is both discriminating and universal.

And I think of the source and origin of His tears. Standing by the grave, He mourned for my sorrows, my desolating bereavements, the orphanhood of my life when my dear ones are snatched away; sitting on the hillside over against Jerusalem, He mourned for my sins. And still He is afflicted in all my affliction; and still He is cut to the quick when I take the way whose end is death—He cannot bear to lose me.

And then I rejoice in the issue of the Saviour's tears. They did not drain the force out of His soul. They roused and quickened Him. The new life of Lazarus was the result in the one case, the atoning death of the cross in the other. Oh blessed tears! oh happy weeping! oh sorrow effectual and fruit-bearing!

Let me pray God that my own tears may be such as these—not pusillanimous but Christlike.