Why Should I Weep?

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 22, 1876,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"And there followed Him a great company of people, and of women, which
also bewailed and lamented Him. But Jesus turning unto them said,
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves, and
for your children. For behold, the days are coming in which they shall
say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the
paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the
mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these
things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" Luke 23:27-31.

CAN you picture the scene? Jesus is given up by Pilate to the Jews that
they may do their will with Him and, led by a small band of soldiers,
He is conducted into the public street, bearing His Cross upon His
shoulders. Perhaps they judged Him to be weary with His night of
watching and worn with His suffering from the scourge, and they feared
lest He might die upon the road and, therefore, with a cruel mercy,
they laid hold upon one in the crowd who had too loudly expressed His
sympathy, impressed him into military service and compelled him to
assist in carrying the instrument of execution. You see the haughty
scribes and the ribald throng–but the center of the spectacle, and the
cause of it all was our Lord Himself–Jesus of Nazareth, the King of
the Jews.

We cannot paint Him. All who have ever attempted to do so have, to a
large extent, been unsuccessful, for there was upon His face a mingled
majesty and meekness, loveliness and lowliness, sanctity and sorrow
which it would not be possible to express upon canvas or to represent
in words. About His Person there were abundant marks of cruelty. He had
been scourged. Everyone could see it. His own garments, which they had
put upon Him, could not conceal the marks of the Roman lash. The traces
of the crown of thorns were on His brow and the rough treatment of the
soldiers had left its tokens, too, so that His visage was more marred
than that of any man. And His form more than the sons of men.

And now He is being led away to be put to the shameful death of the
Cross. There were some glad eyes there, delighted that, at last, their
victim was in their power and that the eloquent tongue which had
exposed their hypocrisy would now be silenced in death. There, too,
were the unfeeling Romans, to whom human life was a trifle. And all
around, gathered in dense masses, the brutal mob, bribed to shout
against their best Friend. But all then present were not in this savage
mood. There were some–and to the honor of the sex it is recorded that
they were women–who entered their protest by their cries and
lamentations.

Not silently in their sorrow did they weep, but they began to lament
aloud and bewail audibly, as though they were attending the funeral of
some dear friend, or expected the death of one of their kindred. The
voice of a woman's weeping has great power with most of us, but it
would not stir the stony hearts of Roman legionaries. The wail of women
was no more to them than the moaning of the winds among the forest
trees! Yet it must have struck many of the less stern and stolid mold
and filled their souls with some measure of kindred feeling. Chiefly,
however, did it strike One, the most tender hearted among them all, One
whose ear was delicately sensitive to every sound of sorrow.

And though He had not answered Herod and had given Pilate but a few
words of reply. And though amidst all the mockeries and scourging He
had been as dumb as a sheep before her shearers, yet He paused and,
looking round upon the weeping company, piteously, yet sublimely broke
the silence by saying to them, "Weep not for Me, but weep for
yourselves and for your children." As for the words, themselves, they
are especially noteworthy, because they constitute the last connected
discourse of the Savior before He died. All that He said afterwards was
fragmentary and mainly of the nature of prayer. A sentence to John and
to His mother, and to the dying thief. Just a word or two looking
downward, but for the most part He uttered broken sentences which flew
upwards on the wings of strong desire.

This was His last address, a farewell sermonette delivered amid
surroundings most sad and solemn, restraining tears and yet, at the
same time, causing them to flow. We reckon the words to be all the more
weighty and full of solemnity because of the occasion, but even apart
from this, the truths delivered were, in themselves, of the utmost
importance and solemnity. This last discourse of our Lord before His
death was terribly prophetic to a world rejecting Him–portentous of a
thousand woes to a people whom He loved–woes which even He could not
avert because they had rejected His interposition and refused the mercy
which He came to bring. "Daughters of Jerusalem," said He, "weep not
for Me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children."

Not many hours before, He had, Himself, set them the example by weeping
over the doomed city, and crying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that
kill the Prophets, and stone them which are sent unto you, how often
would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her
chickens under her wings, and you would not!" Looking even upon the
surface of the words you will perceive that they bear His undoubted
image and superscription. Who but He would have spoken after this sort?
You are sure that the passage is genuine, for it is, in all respects,
so inimitably Christ-like. See how self-oblivious He was–for Himself
He asks not even tears of sympathy. Was there no cause for grief? Yes,
cause enough, and yet He says, "Weep not for Me, but weep for
yourselves," as if all His thoughts were taken up with other griefs
than His own and He would not have a tear wasted upon Him, but spent on
woes which grieved Him more than His own pangs.

Observe the majesty of the speech, too, steeped as the speaker was in
misery. You can see that His is sorrow which well deserved to be wept
over, but He is not overcome by it, but rather His royal soul reigns in
the future. And as a King, He anticipates His scepter and His Judgment
Seat and foretells the doom of those who now insult Him. Here is no
cowardly spirit, no confession of defeat, no appeal for pity, no shadow
of petty resentment, but on the contrary, a majestic consciousness of
strength! With His calm, prophetic eye, He looks beyond the intervening
years and sees Jerusalem besieged and captured. He speaks as though He
heard the awful shrieks which betokened the entrance of the Romans into
the city and the smiting down of young and old, women and children.

No, mark how His piercing eyes see yet further–He beholds and
describes the day when He shall sit upon the Throne of Judgment and
summon all men to His bar. When He who was, then, the weary Man before
His foes should alarm the ungodly by the appearance of His Countenance,
so that they would call to the mountains to fall upon them and to the
rocks to hide them from His face! He speaks as if conscious of the
majesty that would be upon Him in that dreadful day and yet, at the
same time, pitiful towards those who, by their sins, were bringing upon
themselves so terrible a doom! He says, in effect, "Weep for those
concerning whom it would have been better that they had never been
born, and for whom annihilation would be a consummation devoutly to be
wished."

He dries up the tears which were flowing for Himself, that the women
may draw up the sluices of their souls and let the torrents of their
grief flow forth for impenitent sinners who will be filled with
unutterable dismay at His Second Coming. May the Holy Spirit help me
while handling this awful subject! The text very readily divides itself
into two parts. The one may be headed, "Weep not.''" The other, "Weep."
The first is, "Weep not," or what the Savior suggested. The second is,
"Weep," or what the Savior commanded.

I. He said to the weeping women, "WEEP NOT." There are some cold,
calculating expositors who make it out that our Lord reproved these
women for weeping and that there was something wrong, or, if not
altogether wrong, yet something very far from commendable in their
sorrow. I think they call it, "the sentimental sympathy," of these kind
souls. There is no being much more unnatural than a cold-blooded
commentator who bites at every letter and nibbles at the grammatical
meaning of every syllable, translating with his lexicon, but never
exercising common sense, or allowing even the least play to his heart.

Blame these women? No! Bless them again and again! It was the one
redeeming trait in the dread march along the Via Dolorosa! Let it not
be dreamed that Jesus could have censured those who wept for Him! No!
No! No–a thousand times, No! These gentle women appear in a happy
contrast to the chief priests with their savage malice, and to the
thoughtless multitude with their fierce cry of, "Crucify Him, crucify
Him!" They seem, to me, to have shown a noble courage in daring to
express their sympathy with One whom everybody else hunted to death
with such ferocity. To espouse His cause amid those hoarse cries of,
"Crucify Him, crucify Him," was courage more than manly! Those women

were heroines more valiant than those who rush upon the spoil. Those
lamentations, in sympathy with Him who was being led to die, are worthy
of our praise and not of our criticism!

Our Lord accepted the sympathy they evinced and it was only His great
disinterested unselfishness which made Him say, "Spare your griefs for
other sorrows." It was not because they were wrong, but because there
was something still more necessary to be done than even to weep for
Him. I do not think we erred when we sang just now–

"A moment give loose to grief,

Let grateful sorrows rise,

And wash the bloody stains away

With torrents from your eyes." Have we not all felt it to be a gracious
exercise to sing in unison that almost dirge–

"Oh come and mourn with me awhile;

Oh come to the Savior's side;

Oh come, together let us mourn:

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for Him,

While soldiers scoff and Jews deride?

Ah! Look howpatiently He hangs;

Jesus, our Lord, is crucified"?

Who among us, for words like these, can blame Dr. Watts and others when
they sing–

"Thus might I hide my blushing face, While His dear Cross appears,
Dissolve my heart in thankfulness, And melt my eyes to tears"?

There can be nothing ill about the weeping of these women and,
therefore, let us proceed to say, first, that their sorrow was
legitimate and well-grounded. There was reason for their weeping! They
saw Him suffering, friendless and hunted to death–they could not but
bewail Him!

Had I been there and seen Him all alone, and marked the cruel eyes that
watched Him, and heard the malicious voices which assailed Him, I, too,
must have wept! I hope I am not so past feeling as to have looked on
without overflowing sorrow. See those bleeding shoulders, those
lacerated temples–mark, above all, that quiet, unrivalled God-like
Countenance, so marred with sacred grief! One must have wept, surely,
if one had a heart anywhere within him, to think that He who suffered
thus, and was about to suffer so much more, should be so gentle and so
unresisting! Was not this cause for intense sympathy? He was meek and
lowly in heart and, therefore, He returned none of those fierce looks
and answered none of those ferocious words.

He was like a lamb in the midst of wolves, or a dove surrounded by a
thousand hawks, or a milk-white hare amid baying hounds! There was none
to pity and none to help! Shall we, then, refuse our compassion? No!
You women's eyes, you did well to weep–how could you help it, since
you were mothers of children and, therefore, had hearts to love? How
could you help weeping for Him who was so lowly, so gentle, so
unselfish, so submissive to all they put upon Him? Surely it was a
superfluity of malice to be hunting Him to death who, even in life, was
so much the Man of Sorrows! And then He was so innocent and pure! What
had He done amiss? They could not answer Pilate's challenge–"Why, what
evil has He done?" There was no fault in Him, they could not find any!

You could see by the very look of Him that He was the purest of all
mankind–that all around Him was sin and vanity–yet He, alone, was
Holiness and Truth! Why, then, should they lead Him forth among
malefactors and nail those blessed hands and feet to the wood and hang
Him to a tree? Above all, in addition to His being innocent of fault,
He had been so full of kindness–of more than kindness–of infinite
love to all mankind and even in His deepest sorrow boundless
benevolence shone in His Countenance, beaming as the sun! He looked
upon His enemies and His glance was royal but it was tender, too.
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," was trembling
on His lips. He would not harm them. Not He! He would not curse them
though His curse had withered them, nor even frown upon them, though
that frown might have secured His liberation! He was too good to render
evil for evil!

These women remembered what a life He had led. They remembered how He
had fed the hungry–perhaps some of them had even eaten of the loaves
and fishes. They remembered how He had healed their children, raised
their dead and

had dislodged foul fiends from the bodies of their friends. He had
preached openly in their streets and He had never taught ill will, but
always gentleness and love. He had been popular and stood at the head
of the multitude at one time, but He had never used His power for
selfish purposes. He had ridden through their streets in pomp, but the
pomp was simple and homely–on a colt, the foal of an ass had He ridden
with children for His courtiers–and with no sound of the trumpets of
war, but only with the children's cries of, "Hosanna, blessed is He
that comes in the name of the Lord."

Why should they crucify Him? He had done nothing but good! His noble
Presence seemed to appeal to the women and they asked each other, "For
which of His works would they slay Him? For which of His actions would
they put Him to death?" He, the Friend of the friendless, why should He
die? I cannot, I say again, but commend the tears of these women! It is
little marvel that they should weep and bewail when they saw the
Innocent One about to die. I think, too, that this weeping on the part
of the women was a very hopeful emotion. It was far better, certainly,
than the non-emotion or the cruelty of those who formed that motley
throng. It showed some tenderness of heart, and tenderness of heart,
though it is but natural, may often serve as a groundwork upon which
better and holier and more spiritual feelings may be placed.

It is objected that persons weep when they hear the story of other
griefs besides those of Jesus and I am glad they do. Should they not
weep with them that weep? It is also objected that this natural
sympathy may, in many cases, be as much due to the skill of the orator
as in others it is the undoubted result of the music of the oratorio. I
know it is so. I am going to show you that mere emotional sympathy is
not all, nor a half, nor a tenth of what is needed. Still, I should be
sorry if I thought myself capable of remembering the griefs of Jesus
without emotion while other men's woes affected me. And I should
greatly deplore the fact if it were, indeed, true that you were all,
especially you women, so hardened that you could think of Jesus of
Nazareth bleeding and dying without your hearts beginning to melt.

The emotion is good, at any rate, so far that if it were absent you
would be bereft of humanity and turned to stones. It is hopeful because
it opens a door through which something better may enter. This
tenderness is a natural stock suitable for grafting something far
higher upon. He who can weep for the sorrows of Christ may soon be on
the road towards weeping over the sin which caused the sorrow, or he
may be on the highway towards being able to lament, as Christ bids men
lament, those other griefs and miseries which sin brings upon
themselves and upon their children. I would not carry the emotional
towards Christ to an excess, nor ask men to make Jesus' death only a
fountain of sorrow, since it is also a source of joy. I would deplore
that idolatrous emotion which weeps before a hideous image, or mourns
over touching a picture. But still, I would not have men, at the
thought of Jesus dying, act as if they were sticks and stones, but
prove that they mourn for Him whom they have pierced.

Having said this much, we now add that on our Lord's part, such sorrow
was fitly repressed, because, after all, though naturally good, it is
not more than natural, and falls short of spiritual excellence. It is
no proof of the work of the Spirit upon your heart that you weep as you
hear the story of Christ's death, for probably you would have been even
more affected had you seen a murderer hanged. It is no proof that you
are truly saved because you are moved to great emotions whenever you
hear the details of the Crucifixion, for the Bulgarian atrocities
excited you equally as much. I think it good that you should be moved,
as I have said before, but it is only naturally and not spiritually
good.

Doubtless there are many who have shed more tears over the silly story
of a love-sick maid in a frivolous novel than they have ever given to
the story of the Lover of our souls. Though they have felt emotion when
they have pictured the sufferings of Emmanuel, they have felt even more
when the bewitching pen of fiction has sketched some imaginary picture
of fancied woes. No, no, these natural sympathies are not to be
commended so that we wish you to be continually exercised with them!
Our Lord did well to give them healthy bounds. Besides, such feeling is
generally very evanescent. Tears of mere emotion, because of the
external sufferings of Christ, are speedily wiped away and forgotten.

We do not know that any of these women ever became our Lord's converts.
Among those who met in the upper room we do not know that any had taken
part with this company of weepers. These were women of Jerusalem and
the followers of Christ at His death, who ministered unto Him, were
generally women from Galilee. For this see Matthew 27:54-56. I fear
that the most of these Jerusalem sympathizers forgot tomorrow that they
had wept today. I may be mistaken, but there is nothing in the mere
fact of their lamenting the Savior's doom which would prove them to be
His regenerated followers. The morning cloud and the early dew are fit
emblems of such fleeting emotions.

Such weeping, too, is morally powerless–it has no effect upon the
mind. It does not change the character. It does not cause the putting
away of sin, nor create real and saving faith in Jesus Christ. Many
tears are shed under powerful sermons that are so much wasted
fluid–when the discourse is over, the sorrow has ceased. There was no
work of Grace upon the inner heart, it was all surface work and no
more. The worst of it is, such feeling is often deceptive, for people
are apt to think, "I must have something good in me, for what a time of
weeping I had under the sermon and how tender I felt when I heard the
description of Christ upon the Cross!"

Yes, and thus you may wrap yourself up in the belief that you are under
the influence of the Holy Spirit when, after all, it is only ordinary
human feeling. You may conclude, "Surely these drops come from a heart
of flesh," when it may be only moisture condensed upon a heart of
stone! This feeling, too, may stand in the way of something a great
deal better. Jesus would not have these women weep for one thing,
because they were to weep for another thing which far more seriously
demanded their weeping! You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth
as much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die!
You need not weep over the Crucifixion, but weep over your
transgressions, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree!

To weep over a dying Savior is to lament the remedy–it were wiser to
bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Savior is to wet the
surgeon's knife with tears–it were better to bewail that spreading
polyp which that knife must cut away! To weep over the Lord Jesus as He
goes to the Cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the
highest joy that ever Heaven and earth have known! Your tears are
scarcely needed there–they are natural–but a deeper wisdom will make
you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and
the grave! If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we
should have broken the Law which He thus painfully vindicated. Let us
mourn that we should have incurred the penalty which He, even to the
death, was made to endure.

Jesus wished them not so much to look at His outward sufferings as at
the secret inward cause of that outward sorrow, namely, the
transgression and the iniquity of His people which had laid the Cross
upon His shoulders and surrounded Him with enemies! As I quoted, just
now, certain verses which led us to lament our Lord, let me propose to
you as better, still, those words of Watts–

"'Twas you, my sins, my cruel sins,

His chief tormentors were!

Each of my crimes became a nail,

And unbelief the spear.

'Twas you that pulled the vengeance down

Upon His guiltless head:

Break, break, my heart, oh burst my eyes!

And let my sorrows bleed.

Strike, mighty Grace, my flinty soul,

Till melting waters flow,

And deep repentance drowns my eyes

In sorrow and in woe."

II. Now we pass on from, "Weep not," to, "WEEP." May God the Holy
Spirit help us to dwell upon that for a while with profit to our souls.
Though Jesus stops one channel for tears, he opens another and a wider
one. Let us look to it. First, when He said, "Weep for yourselves," He
meant that they were to lament and bewail the sin which had brought Him
where He was, seeing He had come to suffer for it. And He would have
them weep because that sin would bring them and their children into yet
deeper woe.

You know that just before He uttered this remarkable saying, the
husbands, the fathers and the sons of those women had been crying with
loud voices, "Let Him be crucified," and when Pilate had taken water
and washed his hands to show that he was innocent of the blood of
Jesus, they had imprecated upon their nation, and upon their unborn
sons, the curse which follows from such a deed. "Then answered all the
people, His blood be on us and on our children." And though these women
lamented and mourned, yet over their heads, the men who had spoken for
the nation had gathered the thunder cloud of Divine Wrath! Jesus points
to it and says, "Weep for the national sin, weep for the national curse
which will surely come upon you, because you are putting the Just One
to death."

Yes, deeper, still, was His meaning, for all those about Him were, in a
sense, guilty of His death. And you, and I, and all the rest of mankind
have been, in our measure, the cause of the Savior's Crucifixion. Oh,
Brothers and Sisters, this is the reason why we should weep–because we
have broken the Divine Law and rendered it impossible that we should be
saved except Jesus Christ should die! If we have not believed in Jesus
Christ, we have this cause for lamentation–that our sin abides upon us
at this present moment! That curse which crushed the Savior down till
He cried, Eloi, Eloi, lama Sa-bachthani, is resting upon some who are
here this morning!

Souls, you need not pity the dying Christ, but pity yourselves! On your
own selves your sin is resting! And your children growing up
unconverted, hardened in rebellion against God by your example–their
sin is resting upon them, too, and this is the overflowing cause why
you should weep! And you Believers, you from whom sin has been lifted,
who are forgiven for His name's sake–yet lament that you should have
sinned–and with your joy for pardoned guilt mourn that Christ had to
carry the burden which you heaped together and to bear the penalty
which you deserved! All round, Brothers and Sisters, there is abounding
cause for sorrow for sin–a sweet sorrow from the Lord's people and a
bitter sorrow from those who have no part nor lot in the result of
Christ's passion as yet, but who, nevertheless, are partakers in the
crime which slew the Son of God!

1 beg you, now, to look again into the reason why our Lord bade them
weep. It was, first, for their sin, but it was next for the impending
punishment of their sins. The punishment of the national sin of the Jew
was to be the scattering of his nation and the total destruction of its
holy city! And well does our Savior speak of it in terrible language,
for under all Heaven and in all history there never was such a scene of
misery as the siege and destruction of Jerusalem! I need not give you
any outline of it because you must be familiar with that painful
subject where every horror seems to be combined in one and exaggerated
to the utmost! Nothing has ever surpassed it! I question if anything
ever equaled it.

But our Lord, as I have hinted, looked further than the Roman sword and
the massacre of the Jews. Often, in His preaching, you do not know
whether He is talking of the siege of Jerusalem or of the Judgment Day,
for the one was on His mind such a foreshadowing, rehearsal and type of
the other–so that in His language He often seemed to melt the two into
one. He means to you and to me, this morning, to speak, not of besieged
Jerusalem, but of that Day of Wrath, that dreadful day–what man among
us shall be able to abide its coming? There is surely cause enough for
weeping, for when that day comes it will find some men in such a state
that it would have been better for them that they had never been born!

When the dreadful sentence shall come from the Judge, "Depart, you
cursed, into everlasting fire in Hell, prepared for the devil and his
angels," they will bless the barren womb and the breast at which no
child has sucked! Then will impenitent sinners bitterly exclaim,
"Cursed be the day when I was born! Let not the day when my mother bore
me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father,
saying, A man child is born unto you; making him very glad." They will
wring their hands in anguish and curse their existence and wish that
they had never seen the light! So terrible will the doom of the wicked
be, that mothers who looked upon the birth of their children as the
consummation of their joy, shall wish they had been barren and never
carried a babe at their breasts! They shall count those happy who were
childless, whom, perhaps in their hearts, in their past lives they
despised. Existence is, in itself, a blessing–but what shall be the
misery which shall make men wish that they had never breathed? Yet,
alas, such is the condition of multitudes while I am speaking to you,
and such will soon be the condition of some who are looking into my
face now, unless they repent! Alas! Alas! Weep for yourselves and for
your children!

Further, our Lord went on, with that melting voice of His, in
overflowing grief to say that they might reserve their tears for those
who would, before long, wish to be annihilated, but wish in vain. "Then
shall men begin to say to the rocks, fall on us, and to the hills,
cover us." The falling of the mountain would grind them to powder and
they wish for that! The descent of the hill upon them would bury them
in a deep abyss and they would rather be immured in the bowels of the
earth forever than have to look upon the face of the Great Judge! They
ask to be crushed outright, or to be buried alive sooner than to feel
the punishment of their sins!

Then shall be fulfilled the Word of the Lord by His servant, John, "And
in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall
desire to die, and death shall flee from them" (Rev. 9:6). Ah, Sirs,
extinction is a blessing too great to be permitted to the ungodly!
Earth will have no heart of compassion for the men who polluted her and
rejected her Lord. The mountains will reply, "We fall at God's bidding,
not at the petition of His enemies," and the hills, in their

stolid silence, will answer, "We cannot, and we would not if we could,
conceal you from the Justice which you, yourselves, willfully
provoked." No, there shall be no refuge for them, no annihilation into
which they can fly! The very hope of it were Heaven to the damned. Oh,
could they but expect it! But it must not, shall not be. Their cry for
extinction shall be in vain.

Now, if you have tears for Jesus dying, reserve them for those to whom
death is but the beginning of evils! If you have griefs for Him to whom
they said, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the paps that gave
You suck," have still more tears for those who shall curse the hour in
which they were conceived! Here is, indeed, a subject which demands the
tears of nations and of ages–souls lost beyond all remedy, seeking
destruction, itself, as a blessing and beginning petitions of
unutterable anguish which shall never cease and never be put into use!
Then our Lord goes on to draw a wonderful parallel and contrast between
His sufferings and those to be lamented, for He says, "If they do these
things in a green tree, what shall they do in the dry?" I suppose He
meant, "If I, who am no rebel against Caesar, suffer so, how will those
suffer whom the Romans take in actual rebellion at the siege of
Jerusalem?"

And He meant, next, to say, "If I who am perfectly innocent, must
nevertheless be put to such a death as this, what will become of the
guilty?" If when fires are raging in the forest, the green trees, full
of sap and moisture, crackle like stubble in the flame, how will the
old dry trees burn which are already rotten to the core and turned to
touchwood–and so prepared as fuel for the furnace? If Jesus suffers,
who has no sin, but is full of the life of innocence and the sap of
holiness, how will they suffer who have long been dead in sin and are
rotten with iniquity? As Peter puts it in another place, "For the time
is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first
begins with us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel
of God? And if the righteous scarcely are saved, where shall the
ungodly and the sinner appear?"

Note well that the sufferings of our Lord, though in some respects far
beyond all conceivable woes, have yet some points about them in which
they differ with advantage from the miseries of lost souls. For, first,
our Lord knew that He was innocent and, therefore, His righteousness
upheld Him. Whatever He suffered, He knew that He deserved none of it.
He had no stings of conscience, nor agonies of remorse. Now, the sting
of future punishment will lie in the indisputable conviction that it is
well deserved. If there were one woe in Hell more than a lost soul
deserved, it would act as an opiate to its pain–but the justice of
every infliction will be the tooth of the worm, the edge of the sword.
No dream of innocence, or conceit of self-righteousness will survive
the Judgment Day–conscience will be awakened and armed to do its
work–the wicked will perceive their guilt and cling to it and this
will make their punishment the more severe. The finally impenitent will
be tormented by their own passions which will rage within them like an
inward Hell.

But our Lord had none of this! There was no evil in Him, no lusting
after evil, no self-seeking, no rebellion of heart, no anger or
discontent. A man in whom there is no evil passion to stir up cannot
know those fierce pangs and wild throes with which raging sin feeds the
soul. Pride, ambition, greed, malice, revenge–these are the fuel of
Hell's fire. Men's selves, not devils, are their tormentors! Their
inward lusts are worms that never die and fires that never can be
quenched! There could be none of this in our Divine Lord. Again, lost
souls hate God and love sin, but Christ ever loved God and hated sin.

Now, to love evil is misery when undisguised and rightly understood sin
is Hell. It is love of evil continued in the soul which causes the
perpetuity of the lost estate of men. But the holy Jesus, though
suffering beyond all conception, could not feel the pangs which come of
hating good and loving evil. He was the green tree and the ungodly are
the dry trees. Yet if the Innocent One suffers so, with what pains will
guilty souls be racked by their avenging consciences? Our Lord Jesus
knew that every pang He suffered was for the good of others–He endured
cheerfully because He saw that He was redeeming a multitude that no man
can number from going down to the Pit. But there is no redeeming power
about the sufferings of the lost–they are not helping anyone, nor
achieving a benevolent design.

The great God has good designs in their punishment, but they are
strangers to any such a purpose. Our Lord had a reward before Him
because of which He endured the Cross, despising the shame. But the
finally condemned have no prospect of reward nor hope of rising from
their doom. How can they expect either? He was full of hope, they are
full of despair. "It is finished" was, for Him, but there is no, "It is
finished" for them. Their sufferings, moreover, are self-caused–their
sin was their own. He endured agonies because others had transgressed
and He willed to save them. Their

sufferings are self-chosen, for they would not be persuaded to forsake
their sins. But He, from necessity of love, was made to bleed–the cup
could not pass from Him if His people were not redeemed.

The torments of the lost will be self-inflicted–they are suicides to
their souls–the venom in their veins is self-created and
self-injected. They torment themselves with sin to which they cleave,
but it pleased the Father to bruise the Son–but the necessity for His
bruising lay not in Himself, but in others. Now, dear Friends, I think
I have said enough on this painful matter to assure you that the most
terrible warning to impenitent men in all the world is the death of
Christ. For if God spared not His own Son, on whom was only laid
imputed sin, will He spare sinners whose sins are actual and their own?
If He smote Him to the death who only stood in the sinner's place, will
He let the impenitent sinner go free? If He who always did His Father's
will and was obedient even unto death, must be forsaken of God, what
will become of those who reject Christ and live and die enemies to the
Most High?

Here is cause for weeping! And, very solemnly would I say it, God help
me to say it so that you may feel it–the most dreadful thought is that
perhaps we, ourselves, are in the condition of guiltiness before God
and are hastening on to the judgment which Christ has foretold! Oh,
think if within the next six months–no, stretch it as far as you
like–if within the next 50 years some of us should be asking the hills
to cover us and wishing that we never had been born? What an awful
prospect! And yet, unless we are renewed in heart and made Believers in
Jesus Christ, that certainly must be our doom! Think of your children,
too, who are growing up about you, capable of understanding and
responsible for their actions. Oh, if they live as they now live, and
die as they now are, you may wish they had never been given to you and
had never borne your name! Think of this and weep!

Dear Friends, if the Lord would put you into a right state of heart,
you would scarcely think of an unconverted person's condition without
the deepest pity. You would not hear an oath in the street without the
tear starting in your eyes! That was a dreadful spectacle which I
pictured to you just now–our Lord bearing His Cross and the women
weeping. But how much more awful is that before me! I see a soul
carrying about itself the instrument of its own destruction and going
onward with it to its doom! Sin is the cross to which the soul will be
fastened and habits and depravities are the nails! The soul is bearing
its sin and loving to bear it! Look, it is going to execution, but at
each step it laughs! Every step it takes is bearing it towards Hell and
yet it makes mirth! Lo, the infatuated one scoffs at the voice that
warns him and every scoff he utters is increasing his guilt!

Look forward to his end, its never-ending end! Look forward to it
steadily, with calm and tearful gaze–is it not an awful spectacle? But
what if you should be beholding yourselves as in a vision, or seeing
your child in the glass of prophecy! If it is your case, I beseech you,
repent of your sins, bewail your condition and fly to Christ for
shelter! And if it is your child, give Heaven no rest! Plead
continually at the Throne of Grace till you have brought down a
blessing from God upon your offspring! Never cease to pray until your
sons and your daughters are safely landed on the Rock of Ages and so
secured there that they will need no other rock to hide them in the day
when Christ shall come.

I beseech you, beloved Christian Friends, ask for tenderness towards
sinners, towards all sinners, and let your tenderness be shown in
fervent prayer, in incessant effort and in holy sympathy towards the
wandering ones. Alas, I have but stuttered and stammered compared with
the manner in which I hoped to have spoken! I may have failed in
expressing myself, but God can bless the word none the less! The
subject is worthy of an angel's tongue! It needs Christ, Himself, to
expound it completely. Would God He might, by His Spirit, expound it to
your hearts in the leisure of this afternoon. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Luke 23:1-31. HYMNS FROM "OUR
OWN HYMN BOOK"–178, 265, 312.
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Why May I Rejoice?