SERMON IV.

LUKE vii. 13.

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her; Weep not.

THESE words express the emotions of our Lord's heart, and his tender behaviour at one of those sad but common sights of woe, to which this our state of mortality and trial exposes us.

It was on his progress to teach men the most important truths from God, when at the entrance of one of the towns of Galilee there was a dead person at that moment carrying out to be buried, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and many people of the town had come out with her to attend the funeral.

The loss of a child is a most natural ground of sorrow; that of an only child, a cause of still greater sorrow; especially if, as in the

present

present case, the lamented object were past childhood, and growing up to years of riper understanding, which appears by our Lord's calling him Young man. He might also be of amiable dispositions and promising talents, which might make him not only very dear to his mother, but the delight of his friends, and an object of general esteem. Alas! how short-lived and uncertain are all our enjoyments and prospects in this world! and how little to be depended upon! and yet we too much depend on their being continued to us, and therefore are miserable in the loss of them..

Our Lord would not have bid the woman to cease weeping, if he had not possessed both the power and the disposition to remove the cause of her grief and tears.

We seldom find him performing any miraculous cure, unless where he was applied to for it; that he might avoid all appearance of self-seeking and vain-glory, where the glory of God and the end of his mission from him were alone to be consulted. But here he judged it fitting to go out of his ordinary course and give way to his feelings, to obey the dictates of that lovely instinct implanted

by our Maker, for the relief of the miserable and afflicted: and with awful solemnity, by a word's speaking, recalled the dead to life, and restored to the disconsolate mother her beloved son.

The sacred historian stays not to relate with what gratitude she expressed herself towards a stranger for such an astonishing, unlookedfor mercy; nor what Jesus himself said to her upon the occasion: for something we are sure he would say, to teach her and the numerous bystanders the intent of so great a miracle, and of such a divine power intrusted to him. The necessary brevity which the sacred writers proposed to themselves, would not allow them to enter into the detail of such cir

cumstances.

St. Luke, however, held it proper to mention the effect of such a wonderful act of divine power on the numerous spectators of it, and the conclusions which they drew from it.

"And there came a fear on all; and they glorified God, saying, that a great prophet is risen up among us; and that God hath visited his people."

The solemn sight of a dead person restored to life struck them with awe and reverence

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of the divine power and goodness, and they thanked God for sending such an extraordinary prophet among them, taking Jesus to be the Messiah, or great prophet, whom they expected.

The particular idiom of the Scripture language here deserves our attention, that we may not misapprehend such expressions as we continually meet with, of God visiting or taking care of his people, coming to them, coming among them, as if it was the Almighty Being himself; but by the language here used by St. Luke, we learn he visits his creatures, comes to them, comes among them, when he raises up any one as his prophet or messenger, and invests him with a divine power and commission to act and speak in his name, as from him; as the people here said, God had visited them, by a great prophet being risen up among them.

So (John i. 11.) you read: "He came to his own, and his own received him not," i. e. God came to the Jews, whom he had distinguished with extraordinary favours, and therefore called them his own people. He came to them, or he visited them by Jesus, the Messiah, his anointed prophet; he made them the of

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fers of his favour, and of eternal life by him: yet "they received him not ;" many rejected him.

For it is of God alone, or his word, or wisdom, by which the world was made, which is the same as God himself, that St. John speaks in the Introduction to his Gospel. And of which word or wisdom of God he afterwards speaks, that it was made flesh-or became man, i. e. God manifested himself, his wisdom and power, by Jesus Christ, who acted by his authority.

Such then was the inference which our Lord was desirous that the multitude should draw from the amazing display of a divine power made by him in restoring life to one that was dead; namely, "that God visited them by him, and that they were to attend to his words as a prophet of God, the Messiah." Such also is the effect which the satisfactory evidence of a power so miraculous ought to have upon us.

But I hasten to the subject of my present discourse; viz. the lesson of humanity which our Saviour's conduct here reads to all of us; and the fitness and necessity of cultivating a compassionate temper and disposition.

I.

We are so framed that the sight of distress in others excites at once a fellow-feeling and

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