Letters

⁵ The difficulty is strongly stated, and may well puzzle even those proficient in Scripture; but for all that, it admits of an easy solution. The Lord wept for the fall of Jerusalem, and He would not have done so if He did not love it. He wept for Lazarus because He loved him. The truth is that it was the people who sinned and not the place. The capture of a city is involved in the slaying of its inhabitants. If Jerusalem was destroyed, it was that its people might be punished; if the temple was overthrown, it was that its figurative sacrifices might be abolished.

As regards its site, lapse of time has but invested it with fresh grandeur. The Jews of old reverenced the Holy of Holies, because of the things contained in it— the cherubim, the mercy-seat, the ark of the covenant, the manna, Aaron's rod, and the golden altar. Does the Lord's sepulchre seem less worthy of veneration? As often as we enter it we see the Saviour in His grave clothes, and if we linger we see again the angel sitting at His feet, and the napkin folded at His head. Long before this sepulchre was hewn out by Joseph, its glory was foretold in Isaiah's prediction, “his rest shall be glorious,” meaning that the place of the Lord's burial should be held in universal honor.