NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.
Christ a merciful Lord.
"Hear me, O Lord, for Thy mercy is kind." (Ps. lxviii. 17.)
I. It is recorded in the Gospel of to-day, that Christ " wept over the city of Jerusalem." (Luke, xix. 41.) God is sensible of our miseries, and compassionates us; hence He is styled by the Apostle, " the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation." (2 Cor. i. 3.) And again he says, "We have not a high priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities." (Heb. iv. 15.) You may, therefore, justly comfort yourself with this thought, that the same merciful God will visit you to-day, to bestow on your souls the riches of His mercy.
II. The mercy of God in regard to man never shone more conspicuously, than in the institution of the holy Eucharist. Well may the Prophet cry out, " He made a remembrance of His wonderful works, being a merciful and a gracious Lord, He hath given food to them that fear Him." (Ps. ex. 4, 5.) Reflect what a mercy it is in Him to give you His own body and blood for your meat and drink. Who ever did so much for his greatest friend? Expose, therefore, before Him, with the utmost , confidence, the miseries of your soul, when He visits you, and beseech Him to remedy them.
III. Above ail things beware, when He enters your soul, of giving Him cause to weep over you, as did unhappy Jerusalem. Addressing Himself to that obstinate city, He foretold its evils, and said they would happen, because "it did not know the time of its visitation." (Luke, xix. 44.) He frequently visits us by holy inspirations, good books, and the like, and by these animates
