drop tears into thy flame, which assuage it not; but (tho they have another design, even to express true compassion) do yet unavoidably heighten and increase the fervor of it, and will do so to all eternity.  He even tells thee, sinner, “Thou hast despised My blood; thou shalt yet have My tears.”  That would have saved thee, these do only lament thee lost.  But the tears wept over others, as lost and past hope, why should they not yet melt thee, while as yet there is hope in thy case?  If thou be effectually melted in thy very soul, and looking to Him whom thou hast pierced, dost truly mourn over Him, thou mayst assure thyself the prospect His weeping eye had of lost souls did not include thee.  His weeping over thee would argue thy case forlorn and hopeless; thy mourning over Him will make it safe and happy.  That it may be so, consider, further, that,

4.  They signify how very intent He is to save souls, and how gladly He would save thine, if yet thou wilt accept of mercy while it may be had.  For if He weep over them that will not be saved, from the same love that is the spring of these tears, would saving mercies proceed to those that are become willing to receive them.  And that love that wept over them that were lost, how will it glory in them that are saved!  There His love is disappointed and vexed, crossed in its gracious intendment; but here, having compassed it, how will He joy over thee with singing, and rest in His love!  And thou also, instead of being revolved in a like ruin with the unreconciled sinners of old Jerusalem, shalt be enrolled among the glorious citizens of the new, and triumph together with them in glory.

BOURDALOUE

THE PASSION OF CHRIST

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Louis Bourdaloue was born at Bourges, in 1632.  At the age of sixteen he entered the order of the Jesuits and was thoroughly educated in the scholarship, philosophy and theology of the day.  He devoted himself entirely to the work of preaching, and was ten times called upon to address Louis XIV and his court from the pulpit as Bossuet’s successor.  This was an unprecedented record and yet Bourdaloue could adapt his style to any audience, and “mechanics left their shops, merchants their business, and lawyers their court house” to hear him.  His high personal character, his simplicity of life, his clear, direct, and logical utterance as an accomplished orator united to make him not only “the preacher of kings but the king of preachers.”  Retiring from the pulpit late in life he ministered to the sick and to prisoners.  He died in Paris, 1704.

BOURDALOUE

1632-1704

THE PASSION OF CHRIST

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 your selves, and for your children.”—­Luke xxiii., 27, 28.