s and the
deepest sympathies with all human grief, that made him even shed tears
at the grave of a friend and in the agony of the garden, and provide a
refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But with this truly human
tenderness and delicacy of feeling, he ever combined an unutterable
dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and imperturbable calmness
of mind. There is a solitary grandeur and majesty in his deepest
sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side
as incompatible with the admiration and reverence for his character. We
feel the force of his words to the women of Jerusalem, when they
bewailed him on the way to Cavalry: 'Weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves and your children.' We never hear him break out in angry
passion and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly
world. He clearly and fully foresaw and repeatedly foretold his
sufferings to his disciples.

And yet never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or
resentment. He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted,
but full of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the
providence of his Heavenly Father. His calmness in the tempest on the
lake, when his disciples were trembling on the brink of destruction and
despair, is an illustration of his heavenly frame of mind. All his works
were performed with a quiet dignity and ease that contrasts most
strikingly with the surrounding commotion and excitement. He never asked
the favor, or heard the applause, or feared the threat of the world. He
moved serenely like the sun above the clouds of human passions and
trials and commotions, as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded
by the element of peace, even in his parting hour in that dark and
solemn night, when he said to his disturbed disciples: 'Peace I leave
with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' He was
never what we call unhappy, but full of inward joy, which he bequeathed
to his disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, 'that they might have
his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With all his severe rebuke to the
Pharisees, he never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good for
evil. He forgave Peter for his denial, and would have forgiven Judas, if
in the exercise of sincere repentance he had sought his pardon. Even
while hanging on the cross, he had only the language