tory of Jesus than his keen
sense of sorrow, and the scope which he allows it. In the tenderness of
his compassion he soothed the overflowing spirit, but he never rebuked
its tears. On the contrary, in a most memorable instance, he recognized
its right to grieve. It was on the way to his own crucifixion, when
crowned with insult, and lacerated with his own sorrows. "Daughters of
Jerusalem," said he, to the sympathizing women, "weep not for me, but
weep for yourselves and for your children." As though he had said, "You
have a right to weep; weep, then, in that great catastrophe which is
coming, when barbed affliction shall pierce your hearts, and the dearest
ties shall be cut in sunder. Those ties are tender; those hearts are
sacred. Therefore, weep!"

But Christ did more than sanction tears in others. He wept himself.
Closest in our consciousness, because they will be most vivid to us
in our darkest and our last hours, are those incidents by the grave of
Lazarus, and over against Jerusalem; the sadness of Gethsemane, and
the divine pathos of the last supper. Never can we fully realize what
a tribute to sorrow is rendered by the tears of Jesus, and the dignity
which has descended upon those who mourn, because he had not where to
lay his head, was despised and rejected of men, and cried out in bitter
agony from the cross. He could not have been our exemplar by despising
sorrow-by treating it with contempt; but only by shrinking from its
pain, and becoming intimate with its anguish,--only as "a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief."

But, on the other hand, Christianity does not over-estimate sorrow.
While it pronounces a benediction upon the mourner, it does not declare
it best that man should always mourn. It would not have us deny the
good that is in the universe. Nay, I apprehend that sorrow itself is
a testimony to that good,--is the anguish and shrinking of the severed
ties that have bound us to it; that it clings closest in hearts of the
widest and most various sympathies; that only souls which have loved
much and enjoyed much can feel its intensity or know its discipline. In
the language of another, "Sorrow is not an independent state of mind,
standing unconnected with all others...It is the effect, and, under
the present conditions of our being, the inevitable effect, of strong
affections. Nay, it is not so much their result, as a certain attitude
of those affections themselves. It not simply flows from the