desolation (which I doubt), he must have done it for a special purpose, and without regard to the literal accuracy of his words.
While, then, I see no proof of the peculiar sorrow ascribed to him on the strength of a prophecy, I freely admit that he had the melancholy which belongs to a sympathetic heart. His words of regret over Jerusalem are unsurpassed in their beauty. At this closing period of his career we may indeed detect the sadness of disappointment. And in the bitter cry that was wrung from him at the end, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" we look down for a moment into an abyss of misery which it is painful to contemplate; physical suffering and a shaken faith, the agonies of unaccomplished purposes, and the still more fearful agony of desertion by the loving Father in whom he had put his trust.
But Jesus, though he knew it not, had done his work. Nay, he had done more than he himself intended. After-ages saw in him—what he saw only in his God—an ideal to be worshiped and a power to be addressed in prayer. We, who are free from this exaggeration of reverence, may yet continue to pay him the high and unquestioned honor which his unflinching devotion to his duty, his gentle regard for the weak and suffering, his uncorrupted purity of mind, and his self-sacrificing love so abundantly deserve.
