gratitude and unbelief-he patiently endured the calumnies and contradiction of sinners against himself-he manifested, on all occasions, a heart feelingly alive to the bodily sufferings, and spiritual destitution of mankind—his beneficence suffered no relaxation, and his compassion refused to be wearied out, with all the indignities and insults with which he had been loaded; and when he found that nothing would avail to remove the blindness of their understandings, or soften the obduracy of their hearts -when he contemplated the fearful extremity to which they were about to carry their enmity and unbelief, and foresaw their obstinate resistance to the testimony that was yet to be borne to his divinity, by his resurrection from the dead, and the effusion of the Holy Ghost on his disciples; even then, he shed tears of compassion over the subjects of his own holy and righteous retribution. That, in the lamentation which our Lord uttered over Jerusalem, he contemplated the spiritual desolation that was coming on the finally impenitent, as well as the destruction of the city itself, cannot, we apprehend, admit of a moment's dispute. The very ground of that lamentation was obviously their rejection of him, as the promised Messiah-a rejection so obstinate and invincible that the Spirit of God had ceased to strive with them, and had already abandoned them to all the blindness and obduracy of a reprobate mind: and we cannot doubt, therefore, that the terrible consequences of this necessary abandonment were full in our Saviour's view when he lamented that the things belonging to their peace were for ever

hid from their eyes. marks have brought us to the very threshold of a profound and inscrutable mystery, and are reminded of the solemn awe with which it becomes us to approach a subject which involves the hidden counsels of unsearchable wisdom, and before which our understanding is summoned, to prostrate its every faculty in holy and humble acquiescence in truths, which God has been pleased to reveal, but which no stretch of created intelligence is adequate fully to comprehend. But may we not be permitted to observe, without travelling beyond the limits of legitimate investigation, or entering the forbidden ground of inquiry, into the secret things of the Most High, that while the compassion of God would prompt him to extend mercy to every apostate child of Adam, there are infinitely wise and righteous reasons that forbid such an indiscriminate exercise of that mercy-that though, in one sense, he wills the repentance and salvation of every sinner, inasmuch as the returning allegiance of a rebel subject must be regarded by him with complacency, as accordant with the holiness and unbounded beneficence of his nature; yet there is to him who comprehends at once all the purposes of his holy administration, a limit beyond which his Spirit must cease to strive with the obstinacy and perverseness of the carnal mind; and that, in every case, therefore, where his grace is withheld, or where his Spirit is withdrawn, it is because the holy, but, to us, unsearchable purposes of his moral government, lay a restraint, as it were, on the exercise of his compassion, and fix a point, beyond which his

We are aware that these re

forbearance cannot extend. All this, we conceive, is obviously intimated to us in the passage referred to; and is it not sufficient to silence every such presumptuous question as that which has sometimes been proposed on the subject, Why our Lord should have lamented an evil, which it was not beyond his power, as God, to have averted? May we not ask, in reply, Whether it is befitting arraigned and condemned criminals to meet with a question like this, the most affecting manifestation that can be conceived, of the unmerited compassion of our righteous Judge?whether the tears which the Redeemer shed over the infatuation of Jerusalem, merit such a reception as to be made the subject of inquiry by a daring curiosity?-whether the impenitent, and the unbelieving, whose ruin he lamented, will hereafter venture to charge upon him, the misery which they deliberately and wilfully brought upon themselves? and whether, that very lamentation will not fearfully aggravate their guilt, and impart unspeakable bitterness to the anguish of their remorse?

We do not think it necessary to dwell at greater length on the examination of the subject, as immediately referring to the character and condition of the Jews: and we are not very willing, we confess, to enter more minutely on the inquiry to which it has sometimes given rise, and from which one may gather more to gratify a propensity for idle speculation than of what will minister to practical and profitable instruction. However mysterious the subject may appear to the humble and anxious inquirer, he will see nothing but what is perfectly intelligible in

the simple fact, that the Son of God wept over the ruin of the finally impenitent; the very mystery, with which this fact stands connected, will serve to render it, in his estimation, more impressive and affecting; and he will have no difficulty in perceiving the solemn and important lesson which it is fitted, and obviously designed, to inculcate. Though no direct reference is made, in the language of our Saviour, to any but the unbelieving Jews of that time, we cannot doubt, that what is here written, was written for our admonition; and, indeed, various considerations forbid us to limit the application of this subject to unbelievers of that or any other age. In the last intercessory supplication which our Lord offered up on behalf of his disciples, before he suffered, we find him praying, not for them alone, but for those also which should believe on him through their word; and if, in recommending his followers to the holy keeping of his heavenly Father, he contemplated the successive generations of his people through every subsequent age, may we not infer that his lamentation over the miseries of his irreconcilable enemies was equally extended and comprehensive? But, independent of this consideration, there is another view of the subject which brings it directly to bear on men of every age, and renders it universally applicable to the condition of the impenitent and unbelieving. When our Lord lamented the approaching desolation of the guiltiest, because the most highly-favoured community on earth, and shed tears of commiseration over the irremediable wretchedness of men whom he had so often laboured to convert

and reclaim, and with whose perverse obstinacy he had so long and so patiently borne, it was because he contemplated, in their final destruction, an evil which, considered in itself, was most abhorrent to his holy nature. It presented to him the melancholy spectacle of guilty creatures rejecting every proposal of mercy, and repelling every approach to reconciliation, on the part of their offended Creator; he beheld, in their final impenitency, immortal spirits, on whom he had sought to impress the divine image, and whom he would have quickened with the principles of a divine life, consigned to all the debasement and degradation of spiritual death; and he saw perpetuated in them, beyond the possibility of change, or the hope of mitigation, that enmity against God, which must necessarily bring upon reprobate spirits an eternal accumulation of guilt, and an endless aggravation of suffering. Such were,

without doubt, the evils which our Lord contemplated when he uttered his compassionate lamentation over Jerusalem; and though they are evils of which we can form but a very inadequate conception, does not the simple fact that the Son of God wept, as they presented themselves to the eye of his omniscience, convey an overwhelming idea of their inconceivable magnitude? But do not the same evils accompany the final ruin of every impenitent sinner? Are not these evils just as abhorrent as ever they were to the principles of holiness, and purity, and peace, which characterize the government of an infinitely wise and righteous sovereign? And must they not still present the same aspect of malignity to