tears came from a different and a profounder source!  They welled out of a heart whose deep and tender love was not trusted in, but doubted even by those whom He loved most deeply and tenderly, and at the very moment too when He was about to pour forth upon them the richest treasure of His love, and to do exceeding abundantly above all they could ask or think.  Remember only how He of all men loved; how as a man He longed for His brother’s sympathy, and how as a holy Saviour He longed for His brother’s good.  Remember how earnestly He sought for the one grand result, that of hearty confidence in His goodwill, as the only restorative of humanity fallen and in ruins through the curse of unbelief.  Remember, too, how lonely He was in the world; how few understood Him in any degree, or responded even feebly to the constant, boundless outpouring of His affection; and how many returned His good with evil, His love with bitterest hate;—­remember all this, and conceive if you can what His feelings must have been when returning to this home of His heart, to this green spot amidst the wilderness of hateful distrust, with His whole soul full of such glorious purposes of love and self-sacrifice, and then at such a time to find his best and dearest friends smitten with the universal blight, fallen to the earth and prostrate in the dust under the crushing burden of unbelief!  He does not weep, at first, when Martha addresses him; but when Mary, the loving and confiding—­she of all on earth—­complains; when faith has failed in even her!—­oh, it is too much for His heart!  “And thou too!”—­“Jesus wept!” Ah! that shadow of death in such a soul as this was infinitely sadder to Him than the dead body of her brother, nay, than the contents of all the festering graveyards of the world!  For what is death to sin? and what is the power which can restore by a word the dead body to life, in comparison with that which is required to restore an unbelieving soul to God?  It was this unbelief, the most terrible spectacle which earth presents to the eye of a holy and loving Saviour, that made Him weep as He beheld it for a moment, like a demon-power taking possession of His own best beloved.  And it was this same essential evil, and this alone, which made Him weep once again as He entered Jerusalem, when He cried, “How often would I have gathered you, but ye would not!”

In perfect accordance with this view, we read that when some of the Jews said, as He walked towards the tomb of Lazarus, “Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man had not died?” “Jesus therefore again groaning in himself, cometh to the grave.”  For again the words expressed lost faith in His power, or in His love to “this man.”  In like manner, when Martha, as if to persuade Him not to attempt impossibilities, reminded Him of the long time in which Lazarus had lain in the grave, saying, “Lord, by this time he stinketh,” Jesus sternly rebukes her, “Said I not unto thee,