Some people cry very easily, and for some it is very difficult to cry.  A great many tears on some cheeks do not mean so much as one tear on another cheek.  What is it that I see glittering in the mild eye of Jesus?  It was all the sorrows of earth, and the woes of hell, from which He had plucked our souls, accreted into one transparent drop, lingering on the lower eyelash until it fell on a cheek red with the slap of human hands—­just one salt, bitter, burning tear of Jesus.  No wonder the rock, the sky, and the cemetery were in consternation when He died!  No wonder the universe was convulsed!  It was the Lord God Almighty bursting into tears.  Now, suppose that, notwithstanding all this, a man can not have any affection for Him.  What ought to be done with such hard behavior?

It seems to me that there ought to be some chastisement for a man who will not love such a Christ.  Does it not make your blood tingle to think of Jesus coming over the tens of thousands of miles that seem to separate God from us, and then to see a man jostle Him out, and push Him back, and shut the door in His face, and trample upon His entreaties?  While you may not be able to rise up to the towering excitement of the Apostle in my text, you can at any rate somewhat understand his feelings when he cried out:  “After all this, ’if a man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.’”

Just look at the injustice of not loving Him.  Now, there is nothing that excites a man like injustice.  You go along the street, and you see your little child buffeted, or a ruffian comes and takes a boy’s hat and throws it into the ditch.  You say:  “What great meanness, what injustice that is!” You can not stand injustice.  I remember, in my boyhood days, attending a large meeting in Tripler Hall, New York.  Thousands of people were huzzaing, and the same kind of audiences were assembled at the same time in Boston, Edinburgh, and London.  Why?  Because the Madaii family, in Italy, had been robbed of their Bible.  “A little thing,” you say.  Ah, that injustice was enough to arouse the indignation of a world.  But while we are so sensitive about injustice as between man and man, how little sensitive we are about injustice between man and God.  If there ever was a fair and square purchase of anything, then Christ purchased us.  He paid for us, not in shekels, not in ancient coins inscribed with effigies of Hercules, or AEgina’s tortoise, or lyre of Mitylene, but in two kinds of coin—­one red, the other glittering—­blood and tears!  If anything is purchased and paid for, ought not the goods to be delivered?  If you have bought property and given the money, do you not want to come into possession of it?  “Yes,” you say, “I will have it.  I bought and paid for it.”  And you will go to law for it, and you will denounce the man as a defrauder.  Ay, if need be, you will hurl him into jail.  You will say:  “I am bound to get that property.  I bought it.  I paid for it!”