the manifestation of Himself, in the experience of His people, alike as the Surety-Redeemer and the sympathising Friend. Jude the Apostle put the anxious question, "Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us?" (John xiv. 22). The whole incarnation was an answer to that query. I may embody it, however, in the terse and apposite sentence of an old divine (Dr. South, 1633): "This happiness does Christ vouchsafe to all His, that as a Saviour He once suffered for them, and that as a Friend he always suffers with them." Let Though we have just spoken of the inferiority of the old dispensation in its code of comfort, we may, nevertheless, in illustrating this manifestation of Christ as Consoler,' borrow from Judaism one of its beautiful types;-that, too, from the earliest days of its economy. It is an episode in the life of the most attractive and lovable of the Pilgrim Fathers.' the patriarch Joseph typically reveal the forgiveness, sympathy, and love of that Saviour he so remarkably prefigured. Look at the touching scene recorded in Genesis xlv. 15: "Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them; and after that his brethren talked with him." How descriptive of the true Joseph, when His brethren find themselves in His presence! It is the moment of joyous reconciliation. Jesus first imparts the kiss of forgiveness. There is no possible consolation without that. Then comes the outburst of fond love (for there might be reconciliation between contending parties, without any manifestation of such affectionate solicitude). It might be a cold, unsympathetic remission of debt, or formal pardon of offenceno more. But the true "Brother born for adversity' -the Friend that sticketh closer than any brotherlets fall the tears of tenderest love. Then note, still further, what follows-" And after that, his brethren talked with him." Here we have as a natural, but touching sequence, the consolation of mutual fellowship and intercommunion between Christ and His people. The Bible is the medium of that divine communion on His part. Prayer is the medium of that hallowed fellowship on theirs.1 It reminds of the simple saying of a converted New Zealander:-"I open my Bible, God talks with me: I shut my Bible, and go to my knees, and I talk with God." May that kiss of gracious reconciliation, and that tear of blissful sympathy, be ours. If really and truly "IN CHRIST," they are so! Reader! while you exult in the gracious revelation of the Father, rejoice also in the loving, exalted sympathy of the Brother in your nature-the divinehuman Friend. Make the prayer of the man in Christ' your own- "That I may know Him, . . . and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil. iii. 10). knows all the peculiarities of your trials;-every drop 1 I am indebted for this illustration to a friend. He in your cup, for He Himself drained that cup, filled with every ingredient of sorrow. Oh, when the hour of sudden desolation cometh as a whirlwind,-when the choicest flowers of the earthly garden droop their heads, and hide their dewy tears amid withered leaves and blighted stems, exuding only the fragrance of decay, accept all as the loving, though mysterious, means employed by Him who Himself once "suffered being tempted," to transfer your thoughts and affections to the better Eden, where no flower is known to languish, no frost to injure, no sun to scorch; where the very tears distilled during the night-watches of earth will be transformed into dewdrops sparkling in the morning sunshine of immortality. Meanwhile, carry the cross which He has appointed; take it up in Him, and bear it for Him. Amid a present experience, it may be of clouds and darkness, be it yours to feel in the words of one of God's tried children-"My real life is that hidden with Christ in God, which is a never-failing wellspring of delight. . . . To have the gulph removed which separated me from God, to feel that union as of a branch in the Vine, makes all suffering appear light, since it is His will. Since by it we may be more closely conformed to His image who was made perfect through suffering.' For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ, ... that as ye are partakers of ... 1 "Memorials of a Quiet Life," ii. 125-26. the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation" (2 Cor. i. 5-7). "As ye have been partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation." Yes. Like the aged Simeon in the Jewish temple of old, wait for “ THE Consolation of Israel" (Luke ii. 25). A waiting-time may be needed before "the why and the wherefore " of His dealings are made manifest. But if, like that patriarch of the dawning Gospel dispensation, you take the promised Saviour in the arms of your faith, the day will come (it may be now, it may be at death, it assuredly will be on entering the better Jerusalem Temple above), when you shall with him also, not in a 'Nunc Dimittis,' but in a glorious 'Jubilate,' be able to say, "Mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation!" "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the saivation of the Lord" (Lam. iii. 26). XV. THE DEAD IN CHRIST. "The dead IN CHRIST."—1 Thess. iv. 16. "Them also which sleep IN JESUS."- THOUGHTFUL divine of recent times, almost as if our Apostle's monogram guided his pen, thus writes of "dying in the Lord." "It is the child of God falling asleep in the same arms of redeeming Love in which he was always embraced, and where he always was safe. In the peace of God." 1 How blessed, alike for ourselves, and for those near and dear to us, such a certainty! "We KNOW that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens " (2 Cor. V. 1). How different the hesitating guesses of the noblest heathen, regarding "the land beyond the Stygian river:" such as we find in the utterances of Socrates and Plato, Tacitus and Cicero! One of these, in an epistle to a friend who had lost a relative, says, 1 Bishop M'Ilvaine. |