Invites each weary wing beneath the shade.
While the strong eagle on its cedar boughs
Can make a royal perch, the timid bird
Nestles in peace. Aye, more, the closing hour
Is sanctified by Death's great Conqueror,
Who, as He vanquished, felt the sting He came
To pluck away! That which from earthly view
Is feared and dreaded as an enemy,

Has, from the heavenly side, transmuted been
Into a bright triumphal arch, through which
The ransomed legions of Immanuel pass
Up to their thrones and crowns; for who can fear
To meet the foe their Lord hath overcome?
Who on the willows of the grave can hang

His harp disconsolate? Tuned are its chords
By this Almighty Sufferer to words

Whose sweetest melody in this consists,

THAT HE THAT PATH HAS TROD! "Yea, though I walk Through the lone vale of Death (yet not alone, For Thou art with me) I shall fear no ill; Thy gracious rod and staff shall comfort me!" JESUS! to whom can I commit my all If not to Thee? How wondrously uniting Divinity with human tenderness ! 'Mid varying changes of a varying world Thyself alone continuing unchanged; "Thou for adversity the Brother born," "The Friend that closer than a brother cleaves !"

The everlasting arms, beneath, around;

Lower and deeper than the deepest wave!
Thine, not a formal world's cold interchange
Of sympathy (unworthy of the name);
Into my ev'ry soul-grief enterest Thou

With sensibilities none else can share.

Blest thought! though in Immanuel's heart there dwells

The might of Deity, -the same who counts

The number of the stars, can also count
The number of my sorrows, for Himself
Endured them. Thus, the Greatest of all Beings
Is the most loving! I can upwards look

In trembling transport to His throne and say,
"God! yet my Brother! Brother! yet my God!"

“Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow."-LAM. i. 12. Thou Great High Priest! one loving gleam

Cast from Thy mercy-seat

Changes each poisoned earthly stream

From bitter into sweet.

When Thou so meekly murmur'dst not,
Oh how dare I repine?
Well may my crosses be forgot
When I remember Thine!

Oft in a gloomy chequered past,
When human hopes were vain,
A gracious smile from Thee was cast,
And all looked bright again.

Dark should my present pathway be,

Earth's hopes deceptive prove;

Let trial bring me nearer Thee,

And all is changed to love.

"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever."-HEB. xiii. 8.
Month after month some vacant chair is seen,
Some music of young voices hushed and gone;
The holy memories of what has been
Carved by loved hands on the sepulchral stone.
"But Thou remainest!" O'er no joys of Thine
Can sound the early dirge or funeral bell;
Earth's best and fondest, trustful I resign,
Sure of Thyself—the Great UNCHANGEABLE!

XI.

DIVINE TEARS OVER AN EARLY GRAVE, AND

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THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD.

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JESUS WEPT."-JOHN xi. 35.

OUR FRIEND LAZARUS SLEEPETH."-JOHN Xi. II.

DIVINE TEARS OVER AN EARLY GRAVE, AND THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD.

ET us turn aside for a little and see this great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears, the God-man Mediator dissolved in tenderest grief. These tears form the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow, it may either dry our own or give them the warrant to flow when we are told-Jesus wept!

Whence those tears? There is often, as we have remarked in a previous meditation, a false interpretation put upon this brief verse, as if it denoted the expression of the Saviour's sorrow for the loss of a loved friend. This, it is plain, it could not be. However mingled may have been the hopes and fears of the weeping mourners around him, He at least knew that in a few brief moments Lazarus was to be restored. He could not surely weep so bitterly, possessing as He then did, the confident assurance that death was about to give back its captive, and light up every teardimmed eye with an ecstasy of joy. Whence, then, we again ask, this strange and mysterious grief? We have space only for two, among other reasons.

(1). JESUS WEPT out of sympathy for the bereaved. The hearts at His side were breaking with anguish. All unconscious of how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into joy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its fearfulness"Lazarus is dead!" When He, the God-man Mediator, with the refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of their affliction, the pentup torrent of His own human sympathies could be restrained no longer. His tears flowed too.

But it would be a contracted view of the tears of Jesus, to think that two solitary mourners in a Jewish graveyard engrossed and monopolised that sympathy. It had a vastly wider sweep.

There were hearts, yes, myriads of desolate sufferers in ages then unborn, who He knew would be brought to stand as you, reader, have lately been, and as He was then doing, by the grave of loved relativesmourners who would have no visible Comforter or Restorer to rush to, as had Martha and Mary, to assuage their grief, and give them back their dead; and when He thought of this, "Jesus wept!"

What an interest it gives to this scene of weeping, to think that at that eventful moment the Saviour had before Him the bereaved of all time;-that His eye was roaming at that moment through deserted chambers, and vacant seats, and opened graves, down to the end of the world! The Rachels weeping for their children, the "little daughters" that "lay