"Being grieved for the hardness of their hearts."--Mark, iii. 5.
On this one occasion only is the expression used with reference to
Jesus--(what intensity of emotion does it denote, spoken of a sinless
nature!)--"He looked round on them _with anger_!" Never did He grieve
for Himself. His intensest sorrows were reserved for those who were
tampering with their own souls, and dishonoring His God. The continual
spectacle of moral evil, thrust on the gaze of spotless purity, made His
earthly history one consecutive history of grief, one perpetual "cross
and passion."
In the tears shed at the grave of Bethany, sympathy, doubtless, for the
world's myriad mourners, had its own share (the bereaved could not part
with so precious a tribute in their hours of sadness), but a far more
impressive cause was one undiscerned by the weeping sisters and
sorrowing crowd; His knowledge of the deep and obdurate impenitence of
those who were about to gaze on the mightiest of miracles, only to
"despise, and wonder, and perish." "_Jesus wept!_"--but His profoundest
anguish was over resisted grace, abused privileges, scorned mercy. It
was the Divine Artificer mourning over His shattered handiwork; the
Almighty Creator weeping over His ruined world; God, the God-man,
"grieving" over the Temple of the soul, a humiliating wreck of what once
was made "after His own image!"
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.