History of Presbyterianism priests and rulers that sought to slay him; there his message was despised, his person insulted, his doc¬ trines maligned, his name cast out as evil. They despised their long promised deliverer—the glory of their nation, the offspring of their great King David, the Saviour of man, the Son of God . Where he ought to be loved he was hated; where he ought to be welcomed, he was ready to be stoned. He saw in Jerusalem a hardened and impenitent city. When you gaze upon the barren rock or desert sand you have no hope of its fertility. Here was a city the men of which were hardened under the kindest and most blessed influences, a region harder than all around, a desert waste on which you would cast seed in vain. A feeling of grief and disappointment must have been felt when this impression rested on the mind. The living stream flowed through their city and they rejected it. He gazed upon a doomed city. Long incensed justice had pronounced the sentence, the sword was made ready for the slaughter. Doomed for crimes untold, by God himself, for guilt never equalled, to punishment never to be surpassed on earth, to be¬ come a moral desolation from which God 's presence would be withdrawn; the Romans would come and the blood of the righteous would be avenged. Secondly. The language of those tears. Tears have tongues. They speak powerfully. When all language fails, tears have prevailed. They have saved the captive from bondage, the prisoner from death, the guilty from condemnation, they have rc- 216