SERMON by the late REV. C. C. MACKINTOSH, D.D., of Tain and Dunoon.
“And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes.”—Luke xix. 41, 42.
It will be felt that this is sacred ground. Nothing more impressively and solemnly interesting is recorded of our Lord during His sojourn on earth, than His weeping over Jerusalem, except the account of His agony in Gethsemane and His death on the tree. We never read of our Saviour smiling, but we read of His weeping. He wept over the grave of Lazarus, and over Jerusalem. Our Lord was now entering Jerusalem, as He had never entered it before, in triumph.
It was a triumph, indeed, which in its aspect befitted His character as the meek and lowly Jesus; not the triumph of an earthly conqueror, but of a spiritual deliverer, for whose condescension there was no service or condition too low to secure the salvation of sinners, and for whose power there was nothing too hard. Just as He tamed the ass’s colt and made it submissive to His will, so does He change, by His grace, the spirits of sinful men.
Yet He permitted His disciples to express their joy freely. Nay, He said in answer to the Pharisees: “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out” (Luke xix. 40). He comes in sight of Jerusalem and all at once, in the midst of this joy, He stops and weeps. What awakened this deep emotion, and in such measure that it overflowed in weeping? He was now entering the city in triumph, within five short days He was to be led forth from it bearing His cross. One of His own disciples was to betray Him. Wicked hands were to seize Him. And after undergoing every species of insult and reproach, He was to be put to a cruel and shameful death. This He knew. He knew all that awaited Him. Was it then the thought that in so short a time all this suffering should come upon Him? For a mere man it might be natural that such a thought, suggested at such a time, should unman Him, and constrain Him to weep. But this was not the cause of Jesus’ weeping. He thought not of Himself, but of Jerusalem.
“If thou hadst known,” or “O that thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes,” i.e., you do not and will not know them, and therefore, in a little time, the Lord will give you over altogether to your own hearts’ lusts.
The Jewish nation and Jerusalem had enjoyed a long and precious day of visitation. It stretched from the time when God visited them in Egypt till the appearance of Christ himself. During this time God
had kept among them, as a peculiar people, His visible Church, blessing them with His word, ordinances, and ambassadors. But though He had at all times a people among them, yet as a body, being true representatives of fallen man, they resisted and vexed His good Spirit. Instead of bearing the fruits of righteousness, they bore the grapes of Sodom, and the clusters of Gomorrah. Some of His prophets they beat and sent empty away, and some they killed. At length the Lord sent His Son to receive the fruits of the vineyard. With His coming the measure of their privileges was filled up to the uttermost, and it was therefore fitting and right that it should be determined whether they should continue still exalted to heaven through bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, or whether, filling up the measure of their iniquity, they should be cast down to Hell. They had done much already to solve this question. They had rejected their Messiah. Some of them had said of His miracles, “He hath Beelzebub, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils,” and some of His personal character, “Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!” “His own had not received Him” (John i. 11). In a few days the cry of “Hosanna to the Son of David!” was to be changed unto the cry, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” They were to kill the Prince of Life. Another gracious message should be sent from His throne on high “beginning at Jerusalem.” But this too should be rejected; and then, as the limit would be reached which the Divine forbearance could not cross, wrath would come forth against them to the uttermost, and all the threatenings recorded in the Word would be executed against them. Beholding then the city, and thinking of its coming destruction, He wept over it.
He saw clearly the guilt of Jerusalem—that all the judgments to come upon it would be a glorious demonstration of the justice and truth of God. Doubtless He saw its especial guilt in rejecting Himself, in hating both Him and His Father. All this He saw in its real character of desperate wickedness; yet seeing it all, He wept over the city. He saw the certainty of its doom. No visible cloud of judgment was suspended over it, no fears were entertained by its inhabitants of approaching doom; but He knew that its sentence had gone forth. He saw the flaming sword stretched over it. He saw the fearfulness of this doom—the holy city, where Old Testament saints had worshipped, and, beholding His day afar off, been glad, razed to the ground; its inhabitants visited with a complication of natural miseries such as had never, in equal measure, met before in the case of any people—wasted and destroyed by famine, the sword, and pestilence; and the remnant of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh made a by-word among all nations and driven to the four winds of heaven—not to be restored, as formerly, after a banishment of seventy years, but to wander for centuries among the nations, the monuments of Jehovah’s wrath.
But, more than all this, He saw multitudes of immortal souls passing unto eternity with the guilt of His blood upon them, dying in darkness, and cast into outer darkness. And He “would have gathered them” (Luke xiii. 34). His infinitely compassionate heart told Him how He had sought their salvation. He knew that He had come to them with glad tidings, that He had sincerely and earnestly invited them to the enjoyment of rest, that His mercy had gone out importunately after them beseeching them not to die, that He had spent His strength in labouring among them; and now finding, as it were, this mercy thrown back upon Him, returning to His breast all but empty, because while He would have gathered them they “would not,” He wept over their coming ruin.
We must remember that this is very holy and tender ground. It is evident that our Lord’s lamentations did not arise from any want of complacency in His Father’s will regarding the salvation of some and not of all. “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matt. xi. 25), or from the want of entire complacency in the threatenings of that law which attaches eternal death to sin; or from any feeling that His own work would be in vain, and that He should not “see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied” (Isa. xlix. 5, 6). None of these things are to be understood. But we trace it to the pity and mercy of His heart, overflowing in sorrow in contemplating the misery produced by sin. Unless He had been “the Lamb of God,” He could not have been thus affected. It was a part of His humiliation to be “despised and rejected of men.” It was a necessary consequence of His purity and love, that this rejection should make Him “a man of sorrows.” And it was perfectly consistent with His perfection as God-man that He should weep over the destruction of sinners, while He saw clearly that they merited their doom, and while the foundations of His own happiness should be altogether untouched by the sight of their misery. We see His holy jealousy in the denunciations against the Scribes and Pharisees: “Ye hypocrites, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” We see His complacency in the punishment of the lost; in the words which He tells us He will address to the wicked on that day: “I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” We see here the gushing forth of His mercy, the mercy which has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” the grace and tenderness of love (unselfish, self-sacrificing love) manifested in the whole of His work of humiliation and suffering, and by which He revealed the Father as “love”; mercy and love not the less real but the more wondrous, because in alliance with the purity that hates sin, and the righteousness which cannot spare sin. We have the heart of Christ opened up to us, a heart filled with goodwill to sinners, with tenderness and compassion; yes, as also having as its deepest affection in connection with the glory of His
Father, thirst for their salvation; full of grace, pure grace, yet holy grace which cannot desire to be exercised at the expense of righteousness or to screen the guilty. And though every tear has been wiped from His eyes, though His sorrows were over when He said, “It is finished,” and He is now infinitely exalted above all sorrow, yet His heart is the same—as gracious, and as full of compassion as in the days of His flesh.
Now then, let us notice a few of the truths taught us by Christ’s weeping and Christ’s words. There are “things which belong to our peace” in this life and in the ages of eternity, which it supremely concerns us to know. Our true peace and happiness depend on our enjoying the favour and friendship of God. If the great God be for us, who can be against us? But if He be against us there is no peace to us; and our case is the more affecting and dangerous if we say “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” God alone can make us happy. He only can fill our hearts. By nature God and we are estranged, and His wrath abides on us. But He has devised and revealed a way of reconciliation and return through Jesus Christ, the Son of His love. “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him: and to our God for He will abundantly pardon.” “These things which belong to our peace” may be said to be saving knowledge of Christ in its excellency and preciousness, or “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; so to know and feel ourselves as lost, so to know Jesus as the way to the Father, as to trust in Him alone for salvation, and to come to God through Him for mercy, acceptance and rest, and for grace to live to His glory; so to know Jesus as that He shall be precious to us, and that to us to live should be Christ—is to “know the things that belong to our peace.” And “blessed is the people that know” them. They have peace with God; they have rest to their souls; they may lie down in peace and take quiet sleep, for the Lord maketh them dwell in safety.
There is a “day” in which they may be known, in which pardon and salvation are to be obtained; and during this day the Redeemer uses many means to awaken the sinner, and to lead him to saving acquaintance with the “things which belong to his peace”; seconding the calls of His word with His providence, standing at His door, digging about the barren tree and dunging it. It is the day of gospel privileges, when the Sun of Righteousness shines forth in the firmament of the truth, when the Lord sets life and death before us, His terrors and His mercies, and invites us to Himself as the God of peace. Oh, to know the value of the gospel. It is the day of life. It is this which gives life its preciousness: that these things may be known, even at the eleventh hour. “All day long” He has “stretched out His hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people” and yet He
says, “To-day if ye will hear My voice, harden not your hearts.” But especially it is the day of youth, most of those who know the Lord savingly were converted in youth. It is the day when the Spirit of God strives with the soul. Generally speaking, this is the gospel day; but there are some special times above others when He strives with men. Let all beware of resisting Him now, lest, as has happened to others, He cease to strive with them, and they be left “like heath in the desert, and see not when good cometh.”
This day is short and will soon come to a close. At the longest, it is a short day. But its continuation is also uncertain. At any moment it may come to an end. The brittle thread of life may be snapped. “What is our life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” The long-suffering of God may come to an end, or He may “swear in His wrath” that we “shall not enter unto His rest.” Yet many refuse to know the things that belong to their peace. As it was in Christ’s day it is so still. They continue as careless about the soul as though it were in no danger. They refuse to believe God’s testimony concerning their lost state, and the way of salvation. They give their hearts and thoughts and energies to this world, as though there were no hereafter. They sleep on in sin, and neglect the great salvation, persuading themselves that they shall “die the death of the righteous” and that their last end shall be like his. “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
If these things are not known in this world, they will never be known. It is only in this world that the Lord exercises pardoning mercy. “There is no devise, no knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” As the tree falleth, so shall it lie. And if they be not known, what remains but “judgment” and the “fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.” The mercy which now says “Why will ye die?” will not interfere to shield or rescue the sinner from avenging justice. Christ’s tears over Jerusalem now assure the most sin-laden sinner of His readiness to receive him and that he cannot perish because of want of willingness in Him to save him. “And ye will not come to me that ye might have life” (John v. 40). But out of the lips of mercy from which the affecting words flowed. “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace,” will then come forth the awful sentence, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, unto everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
To apply these remarks. How unspeakable the obligations of those who are brought so to “know the things which belong to their peace” that it were misery to them not to feel the power of a world to come! It is the sufferings and the grace of Christ that have procured for
you any hope in looking forward to eternity. Let that thought be precious to you. And, oh! by these solemn realities, by the darkness of hell, and the glories of heaven, and the dying love of Christ, be exhorted to plead and wrestle for the salvation of souls. Bring your hearts to this sight, to a weeping Saviour, till they are fired into a flame of compassion for the souls of perishing fellow-sinners, and you seek to “pluck them as brands from the burning.”
How humbling the contemplation of a weeping Jesus to us ministers—even although through grace it be our desire and aim to be faithful and win precious souls—that, believing in the amazing mysteries of redemption, in the soul’s value, and the soul’s immortality, we are not more solemnly in earnest in speaking the word of life; that we are not now as Jeremiah was, when he said: “Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people!” or as Paul was when he said, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you.” How humbling the contemplation to the Christian, in his most advanced state in this world! And yet, if he is seeking after conformity to the Lamb of God, he will one day be like Him in holy love.
What a rebuke also to unconcern for the soul’s salvation. What an awakening call is here! Was it without a reason, or without a sufficient reason, that the Son of God came to our world, and was a man of sorrows, and died on the tree? Or was it to save the soul He came, and was it over the loss of the soul He wept? Then have you no concern for the salvation of your own soul? Will you take no thought about it? Did Christ sweat great drops of blood when He was struggling for its redemption, and are you unacquainted with a single soul-pang or intense striving in reference to it? Did Christ weep such tears as were never shed before, and is it a fiction that there is a hell? Fellow-sinner, awaken! The tears of Christ tell you that you have infinite reason to be concerned and to weep for yourself this day. Remember that while the whole of Christ’s work casts light on the value of the soul and the greatness of its loss, it has not changed your condition by nature. It has made it possible for you, and for me to be saved; but it has not made a natural state less dreadful or dangerous than it was; nay, if you continue Christless, and die Christless, it will fare worse with you in eternity than if you had never heard the Gospel.
“What meanest thou, then, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon thee, that thou perish not. I might beseech you, and I do beseech you, to consider that if you are unaffected by the state of your own soul, it is because sin stupifies and Satan blinds you. It is not the less certain that it is a fearful thing to be going on in this state, till the foot slide, and till distress and anguish come upon you; nor is it the less certain that if your eyes
were opened, if you believed God, you would realise it, and be exercised as the Psalmist was exercised—”The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord: O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul” (Psalm cxvi. 3, 4). I might beseech you, and I do beseech you, to consider what it will be to have these things “hid from your eyes” for ever, to have the reflection following to eternity that you perished because you would not come to Christ.
But I would rather make use of the love of Jesus, as exhibited here, to move, to awaken, to melt, and to draw you. This is the loving Saviour who now invites you—He who wept over His enemies, and His murderers. Think what a heaven it must be, to be with Him! Think what a hell, were there nothing else in hell, to be separated from Him forever!
The Conversion of Rev. Charles Simeon.
CHARLES SIMEON was born at Reading on the 24th September, 1759, and in 1782 was made minister of the Holy Trinity Church, in the Church of England, Cambridge. He died in November, 1836.
His conversion took place when, as a young man, he came up to King’s College, Cambridge. Bishop H. C. G. Moule relates some of the unusual details in Simeon’s experience.
“But three days after Simeon’s arrival an incident occurred which did, in the will of God, effectually modify his whole future. In itself it was a most simple thing. The Provost, Dr. William Cooke, sent from the Lodge to tell him that within a few weeks, at mid-term, the Holy Communion was to be administered in the Chapel, and that he must communicate on that day. The message was based on a college rule now long repealed, and which never should have been enacted. As a fact it took Simeon by surprise. He might have met it with a passing thought of wonder, and then accepted it as inevitable; or he might have attempted a resistance however useless. And so the mandate would have done him nothing but harm. But it was far otherwise; and we will hear his story in his own words, as he tells it in a private Memoir written in 1813:
“It was about the third day after my arrival that I understood I should be expected in the space of about three weeks to attend the Lord’s Supper. What, said I, must I attend? On being informed that I must, the thought rushed into my mind that Satan himself was as fit to attend as I; and that if I must attend, I must prepare for my attendance there. Without a moment’s loss of time I bought the Whole Duty of Man, the only religious book that I had ever heard of, and began to read it with great diligence;
at the same time calling my ways to remembrance, and crying to God for mercy; and so earnest was I in these exercises that within the three weeks I made myself quite ill with reading, fasting and prayer.
“The first book I got to instruct me in reference to the Lord’s Supper was Kettlewell on the Sacrament; but I remember that it required more of me than I could bear, and therefore I procured Bishop Wilson on the Lord’s Supper, which seemed to be more moderate in its requirements. I continued with unabated earnestness to search out and mourn over the numberless iniquities of my former life; and so greatly was my mind oppressed with the weight of them that I frequently looked upon the dogs with envy; wishing, if it were possible, that I could be blessed with their mortality, and they be cursed with my immortality, in my stead. I set myself to undo all my former sins, as far as I could, and did it in some instances which required great self-denial, though I do not think it quite expedient to record them; but the having done it has been a comfort to me to this very hour, inasmuch as it gives me reason to hope that my repentance was genuine.
“My distress of mind continued for about three months, and well might it have continued for years, since my sins were more in number than the hairs of my head; but God in infinite condescension began at last to smile upon me, and to give me a hope of acceptance with Him.
“But as I was reading Bishop Wilson on the Lord’s Supper, I met with an expression to this effect—That the Jews knew what they did, when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering. The thought came into my mind, What, may I transfer all my guilt to another? Has God provided an offering for me, that I may lay my sins on His head? Then, God willing, I will not bear them on my own soul one moment longer. Accordingly I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus; and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of mercy; on the Thursday that hope increased; on the Friday and Saturday it became more strong; and on the Sabbath morning, April 4, I awoke early with these words upon my heart and lips—Jesus is risen to-day! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul; and at the Lord’s Table in our Chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Saviour. I remember on that occasion, there being more bread consecrated than was sufficient for the communicants, the clergyman gave some of us a piece more of it after the service; and on my putting it into my mouth, I covered my face with my hand and prayed. The clergyman seeing it smiled at me; but I thought, if he had felt such a load taken off from his soul as I did, and had been as sensible of his obligations to the Lord Jesus as I was, he would not deem my prayers and praises at all superfluous.”
Letter from David Steven.
TO MRS. AULD, OLRIG, CAITHNESS.
Bower,
13th May, 1865.
Dear Friend,
I was not worse either in body or in spirits for being at Olrig. If not deluded, my bodily frame is better when I get any warmth of spirit. I have nothing at any time when speaking publicly but confused matter, being an unlearned man. But as for recommending Christ to others to cast all their burdens on Him, I would desire when expedient to do so, and also to say that the Lord is not a God afar off to those who seek Him. I had a storm of temptation before going to see you; but the stork, that unclean bird, makes her nest in the fir tree. That thought encouraged me. O! to fly to the clefts of the Rock that is higher than we, there to taste the love of God in Christ; otherwise, we cannot have true rest or enjoyment here or hereafter.
In thinking that you run to broken cisterns in wishing others to pray for you, it is not so at all; it is just going to the one Fountain, seeking there to obtain communion with God and with fellow-believers. I am far behind in this; far behind the fathers and mothers I was acquainted with. Although the Lord has a small remnant yet in our land, what a poor generation of professors we are! We are like a few coals lying scattered on a hearth covered with ashes, hardly any signs of life in them. The vital spark of true godliness, as it appears in a spirit of prayer wrestling for ourselves and others at a throne of grace, is away. There are some ministers and others angry with us for speaking about the fathers and mothers we saw; but we cannot but do so, when we see and feel how far we are behind them in this and other exercises of grace. O! wonderful that we are left on His footstool, bearing His name, and yet trampling on His goodness and long-suffering.
And that bright star in our Church has set—the Rev. Archibald Cook—one of deeper acquaintance with divine things than has appeared for many a day. The Lord be with you and yours.
Yours with much regard,
DAVID STEVEN.
The late Mrs. Donald MacKenzie, North Tolsta.
Reticence in spiritual matters was a common characteristic of many of our godly fathers and mothers. This was specially true regarding the subject of this short obituary. The writer has tried in vain to glean information about this worthy woman’s spiritual history. Still we may say, that in spite of the scantiness of matter regarding Mrs. MacKenzie’s conversion and subsequent profession, we had no doubt of her unfeigned love to the Saviour and His cause.
Apparently the words which were the basis of her hope for eternity and the means of giving her the consciousness of being one of God’s children were these:—What shall we then say to these things, if God be for us, who can be against us? Evidently her hope was in the great substitutionary work of the Christ, who died and rose again for hell-deserving sinners. May we not also infer from this portion of scripture her deep sense of her own sinfulness, for the vicarious sacrifice of the Lord’s Anointed is meaningless and even offensive to such as have no real and spiritual sense of their sin.
Our first impression of this dear child of God was that she was a meek and resigned sufferer. To visit her in her sickness was a pleasure, and as often as we did so our first impression was confirmed. We sometimes forget that submission to the Divine will implies not merely bearing our trials without murmuring or despairing but calls also for the habitual exercise of those graces suitable to a suffering state. To justify God in His most trying dispensations, to cleave to Him even when He smites us, and in face of all the suggestions of nature and unbelief to continue to love Him supremely as an all-sufficient portion: these are the ingredients of a true submission which is the fruit of the Spirit’s sanctifying operations in the heart. Such graces were exhibited by Mrs. MacKenzie over a prolonged period of intense suffering. Although bedridden for the last three years of her pilgrimage in the valley of Baca, she by no means ceased to adorn the doctrine of God and her Saviour. Perhaps the noblest or at least the most convincing testimony of grace in the heart is made known through patient suffering. We have often been convinced of the power and reality of godliness by such a scene rather than by many a sermon.
After following the Lamb here for 25 years she passed on into eternity, there to follow the Lamb eternally for, the promise runs thus, the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall lead them into fountains of living waters.
Our sympathy is extended to her husband and her five daughters, all loyal Free Presbyterians. May they be enabled to follow in her footsteps in making choice of Christ as the only Saviour from sin.—
F. Macdonald.
Suípeir an Tighearn.
LE EANRUIG GROVE.
(Air a leantuinn bho t.d. 120.)
Bhuineadh dhúinn a bhi meas giulain Chriosd na bhás, mar ni a tha mar crioch air eisimpleir a bheatha. Mar a bitheadh-mid a toirt breth air ach a reir a bháis, dh’fhaodadh-mid, bh’uainn-ne sin, beachd cinnteach a bhi againn air ciod a bi a bheatha, agus bho ghné a bheatha cha robh súil ri ní eil ach a leithid so do bhás; báis leis an do
ghlòraich e Dia, agus leis an do theagaisg e clann nan daoine. Chi sinn an t-aon chleachdadh gráidh do’n ni sin a tha maith ga ghlùasad fein, gu làidir agus gu neo-bhàrralach anns na h-uile ni a rinn e agus anns na h-uile ni a dh’fhuing e. Fad roimhe so thug e taigse do’n t-saoghal fòghlum bhuaithe-san macantus agus ioraslaechd inntinn; agus b’e ‘n aon eadar-dhealachadh, anns an t-seadh so, eadar croich a bheatha agus a chuid eile dhith, gu’n robh fhulangas-san an sin na bu ghéire. Bha’n cothrom aige air na subhailean sin fhoillseachadh ann an solus na bu shoilleir na dh’fhoillsicheadh iad roimhe. Bha e’n còmhnuidh a dol suas agus sìos a deanamh maith; agus mar a bheatha, mar sin a bhàs, air a stiuradh gu buannachd chloinn nan daoine. Bha spiorad na diadhachd agus an aoraich leis an robh e air a ghlùasad, ro-shoilleir; Bha anam an còmhnaidh air a sgiathaibh; agus an uibhir de dh’ùine agus a b’urrain e ghlacadh bho ghnìomharan càirdeis, agus coibhnis, agus teagasg do dhaoine, chaith e ann an ùrnuigh ri Dia; agus tha an cuideachadh a bh’aige bhuaithe sin, agus a bhun-adhbhar mhòr a bh’ann dha anns an t-seasamh dheireannach agus dhorch de bheatha, so-thuigsinn. “Athair tháinig an uair. Ghlòraich mise thusa air thalamh: thug mi glòir dhut-sa air thalamh: chriochnaich mi’n obair a thug thu dhomh r’a dheanamh. Agus a nis, Athair, glòraich thusa mise maille riut fein, leis a ghloir a bh’agam maille riut mu’n robh an saoghal ann.” Bha bheatha naomh a chaith e, agus a ghloir a bha ga leantuin bha a soillseachadh na slighe dhorch air an d’imich anam. Mar a sheas e thaobh an t-saoghal agus aoibhneas an t-uile, nochd e na chaith-beatha roimhe sin: oir air dhà a bhi saoibhir, gidheadh air ar son-ne rinneadh bochd e, chum tre a bhochdainn-san gu’m bitheadh-mid air ar deanamh saoibhir; agus gun a bhi smuainteachadh gu’m bheil sòlas na beatha so a co-sheasamh ann am pailteas nan nithean a tha duine sealbhachadh, na gu’m bheil an saoghal so na áite tàimh freagarrach air son toileachais: agus chriochnaich e beatha bhochd agus iosal, ach gidheadh gun a bhi neo-ghlòrmhor, le bás cràiteach agus masluich: a chum gu’m bitheadh-mid air ar teagasg leis, gu faigheil os-cionn gráidh an t-saoghal so agus eagal a leithid sin de bhàs. Cha do thoilich e e fein; cha robh e ciontach de chleachdaidhean feolmhor; cha do dheilbh e a chaithe-beatha a reir mac-meanmainn, no cleachdadh, no miannaibh; bu roghainn leis neamh, bho’n d’thainig e, air thoiseach air an talamh, a dh’ionnsuidh an d’thainig e air teachdaireachd thruasmhor: ghiulain se e fein gu ciallach, feumail agus naomh; agus, mar a ghrian a dol fodha, nochdadh e na bu mhotha de ‘n aig croich a chuairt.
O Iosa, tha mi nis a faicinn ciod a th’agam ri dheanamh ‘n uair a tha mi nochdadh a mach bho bhàis ann a’d shuipeir. Tha mi ri beachd-smuainteachadh air na subhailean agus air na gràsan neamhaidh a bha’n sin ga’n nochdadh a mach ann-ad, agus a bha air am foillseachadh ann an cuairt iomlan do bheatha, agus gu sin mi fein a ghlùasad agus a cheangal gu bhi leantuin an eisimpleir. Tha mi cur romham do leantuinn ged is ann astar fada bhuat; agus ni mi mar mo ghnothach a bhi cosmhuill riutsa na mo ghlùasad uile, co dhiubh ‘s ann a thaobh Dhe,
a thaobh dhaoine, na dha mo thaobh fein. An robh e ábhaisteach anns an eaglais an toiseach, ‘n uair a bhitheadh iad a cumail air chuimhne bás na màrtarach, a bhi’g ainmeachadh an gnìomharan ion-mholta agus am buaidhean luachmhor? Bithidh mi taingeil air son an eisimpleirean agus eisimpleirean dhaoine maitheile, agus leanaidh mi iad eho fad agus a leanas iadsan mo Shlánuighear, ach cha lean ni’s fhaid. Is e t-eisimpleir-sa, O Iosa ro-naomh, a tha mi ciallachadh a bhi’n còmhnaidh am láthair; agus, am feadh a tha mi faicinn do chorp-sa an crochadh air a chrann, oidheirpichidh mi gu bhi sgrìobhadh subhailean ciatach t-anama air m’anam fein. ‘S e chrioch a bhitheas agam ‘s an amharc a bhi air mo cheusadh do’n t-saoghal tre do chrann, ceusaidh e sinn, agus an saoghal a bhi ceusda dhomhsa; a bhi gu h-eudmhor air mo ghlusad anns an ni sin a tha maith, agus a bhi gu macanta, foighidneach fodha gach trioblaid; a bhi air mo ghlusad leis an aon spiorad, agus a bhi beo, agus bás fhaotainn, cosmhill riutsa.
(R’a leantuinn.)