of angelic existence and entering humanity, where do we first behold him? He is shut out from the abodes of men. His cradle is among the herds of the stall. When the shepherds enquired of the angel, where they might find this child, whose birth had illuminated all heaven, and was sweeping the minds of cherub and seraph with wonder and adoration-you remember the reply: "Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.". He is not permitted to draw his first breath in the meanest habitation of poverty. And this exclusion from the light and air of human dwelling places, was a fitting commencement of the life of him, who, in infancy, was hurried across deserts into an inhospitable land; whose boyhood was passed in the meanest and most despised hamlet of the meanest and most despised district of Judea; "who grew up as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground;" all whose years and days were those of a weary, forlorn, waylaid pilgrim, with men's faces hidden from him, and having "not where to lay his head."

But it was not any outward privations which made him "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The woes with which his life was charged were deeper and darker. And in these he was entirely alone—alone in his tears-alone in his prayers and pathetic lamentations. His burdened heart found no communion anywhere, met everywhere only a cold repulsive apathy. Who could sympathize with him when, seeing his Father's love and mercy and glory trampled under foot, he uttere that plaintive exclamation, "O righteous Father, the

world hath not known thee?" At the tomb of Lazarus, who of those mourners could comprehend the bitterness of his soul, as he viewed that melancholy spectacle, and contrasted it with the happiness for which he had formed the human family? Lazarus he would raise and give back to his sisters; but it was sin that had dug that grave; it was sin that had blighted the fair creation of his hand; this caused him to "groan in spirit and be troubled;" this opened that fountain of tears in his heart.

As he approached Jerusalem for the last time, his soul was smitten and rent with a grief still more piercing and desolate. At Bethany "Jesus wept." The Greek word "wept" in this passage describes a soft, silent flow of tears.* But in the other passage, "When he saw the city he wept over it," a very different phrase is employed, one denoting an uncontrollable burst of anguish. And on that memorable occasion what a spectacle was presented. The air around him is quivering with the acclamations of the multitude, as they hail his approach and strew his path with palms; and beneath him is spread the gorgeous magnificence of Jerusalem. But the hosannas of the crowd have no music for his ears, the pomp of the metropolis no splendor for "He wept over it." The emotions long pent

his eyes.

up

and struggling in his bosom could no longer be repressed. "When he saw the city he wept over it." But who in all that throng, which of all his disciples, could comprehend him as he stood in their midst bathed in

.

tears? Who could enter the depths of his soul wrung with unspeakable agony, as he contemplated the moral devastations caused by sin; as he saw even the Holy City become a charnel house of spiritual corruption; as, hanging over the very temple, he detected the lurid. cloud from which the fiery tempest would soon be loosened; as he looked into eternity where hell was uncovered before him?

My brethren, this solitude of Christ's inner life is to me most touching. The coarse and deprayed are deadened in their sensitiveness; as our nature is pure and refined, we crave sympathy. The perfect humanity of Jesus thirsted and pined for sympathy. Then, too, the mysterious and arduous purpose of redeeming a lost world was the absorbing passion of his soul, and made him ardently desire enlightened appreciation. But he looked around and found neither appreciation nor sympathy. With not one even of his most loved Apostles could he interchange word or thought as to his anxieties, disappointments, and sorrows. "Of the people, there was none with him," none who could condole with him in the anguish which drank up his spirit. Human bosoms have been loaded with misery, and human hearts have been bowed down and howled with wretchedness; but never, in all his long and large acquaintance with woe, has man known “ sorrow like unto his sorrow.” For it was the lamentation of a perfectly holy Being, who knew what sin is, what sin had done, was doing, would do. It was the mysterious, incommunicable, unapproachable sorrow of the Creator, standing among the

unnatural children whom he had formed for happiness and love, but who had plunged themselves into misery, and who hated him with a malignity relentless and implacable.

When, from the sorrows of the Saviour's life, we pass to the last closing scenes of his sufferings, the lonesomeness of his mournful condition deepens into most appalling solitude. Early in his ministry there is ever the spirit of buoyancy, but as he approaches its termination, a tone of majestic sadness pervades all his thoughts. Dying is always a solitary process; this to me, is one of the most melancholy things in death, that in that ghastly conflict, none can take part with us. Still, how much may the gentle ministers of love and friendship do, to soothe the languishing form and calm the throbbing.brow. But in the death on Calvary, and in the scenes preparatory to that tragedy, through all that sore "travail of his soul," the Redeemer sounded the depths of misery so entirely and intensely alone, that his human nature seems to have been well nigh overwhelmed by the sense of forlornness, desertion and desolation.

Recall his midnight agony in the garden. "And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." The shades around him had been growing darker and darker each year of his life. On the cross they became utter blackness. But, now, as the word "agony” denotes, he was in a dreadful conflict with a "horror of great darkness." The cup was now set down before him

full of bitterness, which he must soon drain to the dregs. He was brought to the very mouth of the furnace, that he might look in and see the raging billows into which he must venture. When the three Hebrews were cast into the flames, he went in with them, and "the smell of fire passed not on them;" but into this furnace, infinitely more terrible than that of Babylon, he must enter alone. Justice is now separating the victim for the sacrifice. The sentence has now been uttered, "Awake O Sword!" In shedding vengeance on the old world, on Sodom and Gomorrah, on rebel angels, that sword had only slept ; now it must put forth all its sharpness, for it hath a fearful work to do. The proclamation has gone forth, "Awake O Sword against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow" (equal) "saith the Lord of Hosts. Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered."

It is to prepare for this dreadful hour which is at hand, that he retires to the secluded garden of Gethsemane; and what a lonely sufferer is he there, as he lies all along upon the ground that cold night (" for it was cold," John xviii. 18,) drops of blood congealing as they ooze from every pore of his anguished frame. Every thing in this scene is most affecting. The humanity of Jesus was, my brethren, an entire humanity, embracing those elements which are masculine with those which are feminine. With what undaunted courage does he not, on this very night, throw himself at once, and with utter self-forgetfulness, between his disciples and the swords of the guard, saying, "If ye seek me let these