Matthew 23:37-39 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets, and stone them which are sent to you… Oh that "how often"! Do not let it be a mere impassioned exclamation. Make it what it is, a distinct, definite question put to you this day — "how often?" And what arithmetic can write the answer? I never yet visited a man upon a sick-bed — I never talked with a single person in any of those moments which unlock the breast, and set it free to speak its secrets — that I did not receive this confession: "I have been greatly conscious all my life of the inward striving, and the oft-repeated calls of God in my soul." Sometimes, doubtless, those calls fall louder and deeper upon the spiritual ear than they fall at other times. They lie thickest, I believe, in early life. There are states of mind we can scarcely say how, and there are providential scenes we can scarcely say why, which give an intensity to those many voices, when a verse of Scripture will sometimes roll its meaning like thunder, or when a whisper of the soul will carry an accent tenfold with it. But the call is not confined to those specialities. There is a "finger of a man's hand" which is always waking the strings of thought. It is when we lie down; it is when we rise up; it is when we sit in the house; it is when we are walking by the way. We can see it on the little face of early childhood, before the date when our utmost memories reach; we can trace it in ourselves back to the utmost dawn of rising reason. Perhaps not a room in which we have ever laid down to sleep; perhaps not a church into which we have ever entered, even with careless foot; perhaps not a sin which we ever deliberately went and did; perhaps not an incident for weal or woe that lies on the chequered path of life, but there was something there which swelled that "how often?" (J. Vaughan, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! |
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