Not one tear lost! All gathered by the compassion of our Father. Oh, reader, believe not that cruel infidelity that will make the heaven to be as iron and brass; that will shut out all that blessed consolation which God hath provided for the mourner! Take from us the revelation of a Father who loves and pities, and hears our cry and beholds our tears, and what can you leave to us but cold, frozen, despairing hearts? Take from us the assurance of a Father's care and a Father's love, and you leave to us that thick, black, gloomy cloud, composed of all the tears of our sorrowing humanity, but no Sun of Righteousness to paint upon it the rainbow of heavenly peace, and cheering hope, and blessed expectations of the rest that remaineth! Yes, believe, if thou wilt, thy terrible creed, and then weep, and weep, and never cease, because thou hast extinguished in thy breast every ray of the sunlight of everlasting life! Human tears: what is their antidote ? "Behold, the babe wept!" "Jesus wept!" The one answers to the other. The one speaks of earth's sorrowing children: the other of the Man of sorrows, who carries our sorrows for us. The one tells of a sea of human trouble: the other of an ocean of Divine grace, compassion, and sympathy. "Jesus wept!" that tear of sorrow Is a legacy of love; Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, He the same doth ever prove. Thrice Christ wept-at Bethany, on Olivet, in Gethsemane. In each case we have a specific for our tears. He wept at Bethany. The Jews were weeping, but they could not help; but He came and wept who could remove all tears. Those two short words-" Jesus wept' are a ladder reaching from heaven to earth -reaching to each child of sorrow. For couple with them the glorious declaration which had shortly before been uttered— "I am the Resurrection and the Life," and we have pity and power, mercy and might marvellously linked together. He can raise the dead, and therefore do all else. He can bend low and mingle His tears with yours. What is your grief? what is your trouble? Be it desolation of heart, be it a suffering, dying body, here is the consolation you need. Not But Jesus also wept on Olivet. here, because of His own impending sufferings, but because of the city which He loved. And these tears have their lesson -their message. They tell of His sympathy with those who mourn over men's iniquities and follies and perverseness. They tell how He is one with those who in tears are sowing the seeds of eternal life, or who mourn over sins committed and sinners undone. They tell how unwilling is He that men should perish, and how gracious will He be to any who seek for His salvation. Christ wept also in the lonely garden of Gethsemane. There it was that He offered up prayer with strong crying and tears (Heb. v.). And were not those tears a part of His great atonement, a beginning of that suffering completed on Calvary, and which purchased for us a free and sure salvation ? Hence those tears answer the tears of penitents, the sighings of contrite broken hearts. The tears there falling tell us that tears shed near Christ's cross lead onward to pardon and peace and hope. Remember the old proverb-"“No way to Heaven but by Weeping Cross." But this is "servants," and "I have called you friends." I think this revealing is not at an end, and the closer walking there is with God the more there will be of it. It is an intensely interesting subject to me, though I almost never say anything about it. There seem intimations that He will show His "friends" secrets, and don't we often get intimations which cannot be accounted for by mere coincidence? Presentiments which are His preparations, leadings to pray or not to pray for certain persons or things, and so ship" even in these directions. John xvi. 13; xv. 15. Twenty-Seventh Week. Friday. Micah iii. 8, for June 23rd. New Testament parallel seems to be 2 Tim. i. 7. These are both acknowledgments of the gift, Phil. vi. This "full of power" only by the Spirit of the Lord "-see Acts vi. 3, 5, 8— four things Stephen was 66 "full" of. Jesus says, "Thine (Father) is the power"—then "All power is given unto Me," and, "All things that the Father hath are Mine." Then "All are yours"-"power" included. Ours from the Father, in Christ, through the Spirit. See Luke x. 19—“ Behold I give unto you power over all the power of the enemy." But the special power in Micah iii. 8 is power by the Spirit to be instru mental in one great work of the Spirit: "convincing of sin" (John xvi. 8); "to declare unto Israel," etc., etc. Don't we want just this power? In how many cases we (at any rate, I can speak for myself) have failed to reach a heart by even the most fervent telling of the love * Reprinted from the Facsimile Memorial volume, "My Bible Study," with Illustrations. Bound in elegant leatherette for presentation. Third thousand. Price 38. 6d. (London: Home Words Office, 1, Paternoster Buildings, E.C.) The truest memorial of the 'Sweet Singer.' of Jesus, because we have not been full of power to declare "unto Jacob his sin!" Until this is "declared," whether by human instrumentality or by the voice of the Spirit alone, all we can say of Jesus is only as "a very lovely song." It was the son of thunder who was also the apostle of love. I'm writing out on the rocks, and the waves are coming in grandly: so I have been writing rather distractedly but you'll get more than I out of the verse, so I'll give up and look at the waves. : Twenty-Eighth Week. For Sunday, June 30th. Nahum iii. 11. "Thou shalt be hid." Connect with chap. i. 14: "I will make thy grave." Remarkably fulfilled to the letter, Nineveh being "hid" and buried for 2,400 years. Literal fulfilment of these words as threat, argues fulfilment of the very same words as promise--Job v. 21: "Thou shalt be hid." From (1) The scourge of the tongue-Job v. 21. (2) The wicked-Ps. xvii. 9. (3) The secret counsel of the wicked-Ps. lxiv. 2. Under The shadow of Thy wings-Ps. xvii. 5. In (1) His pavilion-Ps. xxvii. 5. (2) The secret of His presence-Ps. xxxi. 20. Christ in God-Col. iii. 3. In the time of trouble-Ps. xxvii. 5. Therefore-I flee unto Thee to hide me- The Children and Sunday Afternoon. F children are to be entertained in the best way, somebody must be their entertainer. Left to themselves, they will find entertainment; but not of the best sort. Solomon said, "A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame;" and Solomon was right in this. If you want to entertain children in the best way on Sunday afternoon, you must give yourself up to the business; and you must prepare for it beforehand. You must sit down with them, and tell them fitting stories, or read to them in language which they can understand and enjoy. Or you can have a little Sundayschool of your own, with its singing, and its lessons, and its maps, and its blackboard, or slate, and its object illustrations; and all the children can have a part in this. Or you can set one group of the children to examine a book of Bible pictures, or one child to explain such pictures to two or three others; and another group to a lesson of Scripture cards, with their stories or simple questions and answers. The very little children can have their Scripture pictures, or models, or blocks, or dissected maps-all different from week-day playthings, and known to them to be so. Then again the children can be set to pick out Bible places, or Bible characters, and arrange them alphabetically; or they can have a share in the endless number of Bible questions, of which there are published collections. Of course there must be variety, a changing from one plan to another, hour by hour as well as week by week. And this will tax the patience and the endurance of any parent. But there is no other way of doing the best for children, in their religious training, than giving time and strength to them, as well as love. "HOLD FAST BY YOUR SUNDAYS.” "Hold Fast by your Sundays." XI. MANY WITNESSES (Continued). XIV. A GERMAN WRITER ON MAN'S NEED OF " CHANGE. OD, who is the Father of our spirits, who knows them to their deepest depths, and who loves with an intense love the poor woman who washes her linen on the river bank and the daughters of kingsGod knows that we have need of change, and He provides generously for this necessity of our nature. He does not, indeed, grant to most of us the costly pleasure of travel, but He gives something else the Lord's-day-the Christian Sabbath, which interrupts the rude labours of the week, which brings with it family joys and rest of conscience, which gives us communion with our Father and our brethren, and which procures to us here below a foretaste of the life to come! Ah! if only in our feverish, harassed age, each toiler would but accept the blessings of the Sabbath! Without the Sabbath, life is but one long sigh. Woe to the poor toiler, above all, who on that day gives himself to work as a beast of burden, incapable of discerning the needs of his body, as if he had no soul to guide him. "The Sunday is the change of which we have need, which is satisfying, which suits the poor as well as the rich, which communicates courage, gives ardour for the battle of life, and patient endurance. O readers, if your days are precious to you, I conjure you, protect with jealous care your Sundays! And as to you, vile egotists, who, either for greed or to facilitate your own pleasures, rob the poor, the labourer, of his one day, his sole recreation, the blessing which is to him the lamb of which Nathan speaks-his Sabbath. I tell you, you are the worst enemies of the people, more to be feared than tyrants, than Jesuits, or than incendiaries, of whom so much is said." XV. DR. BATES. "We ask those who complain of Sabbath restraints, what advantage they expect to 153 arise from its being superseded? They would appropriate it to relaxation. But where has it ever been preserved to the people as a day of rest and enjoyment, when the divine sanctions, which equally forbid labour and recreation on that day, have been once removed? The nations of the Continent have been little embarrassed with the Sabbath for centuries. What have they gained by that exemption? Alas! they are like a ship in a storm, and on a perilous sea, without pilot, or chart, or compass." XVI. ANDREW THOMPSON, D.D. "How does its weekly return, bending over us, like the bow in the cloud, with its sublime memorials of creation and redemption, invite and attract our meditations upwards, and even seem to open up a pathway for our feet into the heaven of heavens. Would we have this radiant memorial blotted out, and gaze upward only upon the dark clouds that have been gathered from our human cares and sorrows? Or, remembering the truths which it commemorates, and the blessings of which it is the divinely constituted vehicle and guard, shall we not hail its earliest beams with those words of the Psalmist, 'This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will be glad and rejoice in it." " XVII. SAMUEL SMILES. "The French are also honest and thrifty, and exceedingly hard-working. The industry of the people is unceasing. Indeed, it is excessive; for they work Sunday and Saturday. Sunday has long ceased to be a Sabbath in France; there is no day of rest there. Before the Revolution, the Saints' days, which the Church ordered to be observed, so encroached on the hours required for labour, that in course of time Sunday became an ordinary working day. And when the Revolution abolished Saints' days and Sabbath days alike, Sunday work became an established practice." Household Words Jan., 1870. "Under the Eyelids of the Morn." BY THE REV. W. POOLE BALFERN, AUTHOR OF "PILGRIM CHIMES FOR THE WEEKS OF THE YEAR." "Feed My lambs."-JESUS. (See Illustration, Page 155.) NDER the eyelids of the morn A little bird was nursed and born; 'Mid heavy storms and nature's strife, It had to struggle for its life. Under the eyelids of the morn A little blade of wheat was born; 'Mid frost and snow it drooped its head, But still it lived amid the dead. Under the eyelids of the morn Its heart was sad, the fields forlorn. Anecdotes about Preachers. SELECTED BY THE EDITOR. CHRISTMAS EVANS. HRISTMAS EVANS was born at Ysgarwen, Cardiganshire, on the 25th of December, 1766. The following is a specimen of his style:THE BEAM. "Then I saw the beam of a great scale; one end descending to the abyss, borne down by the power of the Atonement; the other ascending to the heaven of heavens, and lifting up the prisoners of the tomb. Wonderful scheme! Christ condemned for our justification; forsaken of His Father, that we might enjoy His fellowship; passing under the curse of the law to bear it away from the believer for ever! This is the great scale of redemption. As one end of the beam falls under the load of our sins which were laid on Christ, the other rises, bearing the basket of mercy, full of pardons and blessings and hopes. 'He who knew no sin was made sin for us '-that is His end of the beam; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him'-this is ours. Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor'-there goes His end 64 down; 'that we, through His poverty, might be rich'-here comes ours up." Christmas Evans was kind and tender to dumb animals. The following account of his death is so characteristic of the man, that it ought to be had in remembrance. To several persons standing round his bed he said :— 66 Look at me in myself, I am nothing but ruin; but look at me in Christ, I am heaven and salvation." He added in a joyous strain four lines of a Welsh hymn; then waving his hand, he said in English, "Good-bye, drive on!" Was it another instance of the labour of life pervading by its master-idea the hour of death? For upwards of twenty years "the one-eyed man of Anglesea "-("an eye, sir," said Robert Hall of that one eye, "that might light an army through a wilderness")-for upwards of twenty years, as he had gone to and fro, his friends had given to him a gig, that he might go at his ease his own way, with a horse, called Jack, which became very old in his master's service. Jack knew from a distance the very tones of his master's voice; with him Christmas Evans in long journeys held many a conversation; the horse opened his ears the moment his master began Pilgrim Chimes" (Home Words Office, 1, Paternoster Buildings, E.C.). Price 2s. 6d. A volume of Christian Poems of the highest order of merit. Some of the pieces are exquisitely written. |