been pierced by the barbed and mortal shaft-who has never gazed on the corpse of parent, brother, or child, and seen it closed up from view-who has never made one of the group of weeping mourners that stand, in inexpressible solemnity, by the grave, and feel a sad sinking of heart as they leave behind them, in dust and darkness, that form which they shall not see again till Christ descend and the trumpet sound-such a scaithless and untried believer cannot, though he would, unfold to himself the sweetness and comfort of the saying, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." There is no Christian heart that does not hold by the pledge, "My grace is sufficient for thee;" but it is only when "weakness" overpowers it, that it can really find that His "strength is made perfect." Without affliction, the purest and closest knowledge of God could never be acquired; a vail would still seem to lie upon Him. The glory that surrounds Him might dazzle us; but we should still be comparative strangers to the tenderness and love of His heart. Still at a distance from Him, we would indeed trust Him; but when He lays His hand upon us and brings us nearer Him, then do we acquaint ourselves with His loving-kindness, no longer by report, but by tasting it. You may have seen the solar beam thrown back in yellow splendour from the crystal rocks, as they glistened with gold, but now you have found and gathered the precious ore. It is one thing to admire the beauty of His pavilion, and another thing to be in it; one thing to know Him from what He has said, and another to know Him in

what He has done. Surely experimental intimacy far excels theoretic information; but it is gained only in the school of affliction.

Did, therefore, the friendship of Christ secure us against suffering, it would shade from our view these prime and happy lessons. But Christ is anxious that we learn them, and therefore, though he loves us, He permits us to suffer, that we may yearn for a fuller sense of His presence, and, penetrating into His heart, know, because we feel, the love and power of our Beloved and Friend.

"JESUS WEPT."

MARVELLOUS spectacle! Jesus wept, as the mourners about Him wept ! The sight of such sorrow overpowered Him, and He could not refrain. That was a true manhood, which felt this touch of nature, and burst into tears. There was no Stoicism in His constitution. There was no attempt to train down His sympathies, and educate Himself to a hard and inhuman indifference. Neither was He ashamed of His possession of our ordinary sensibilities. He felt it no weakness to weep in public with them that wept. So sinful did sin appear in its penalty of death-so saddening was the desolation which death had brought into that happy home-so humbling was the picture of Lazarus, alive and active but a few days before, but now laid in the narrow vault, and carefully concealed from view,

that the Saviour bowed to the stroke, and, under the impulse of genuine sympathy, "Jesus wept." Perhaps the prospect of His own death and entombment rose up suddenly before Him-the thought that He should soon be as Lazarus now was, a cold and inanimate corpse, with weeping mourners making a similar procession to His tomb. And though He had but to take a few steps more, and the greatest of His miracles should be achieved, and he that was dead should be raised-so powerful and tender were His mingled sensations that "Jesus wept."

Shall we use the common term, and say that He was "unmanned?" No. Such an epithet originates in a grievous misinterpretation of our nature. Is man to be denied the relief of tears, and woman only to be so privileged? Is it beneath his masculine robustness to show a moistened eye? Is he to be a traitor to deepest and purest emotion, and to attempt to cauterize the fountain of tears? No. Christ, the model of manhood, the mirror of all that was noble and dignified, did not deny Himself the relief; and shall men be looked upon as effeminate, as falling from the dignity of their sex, if, with emotions like Christ's, they shed tears like Him? No. Perish that dignity which would aspire to a transcendental apathy that man was not made for, and which Jesus despised! The tear is as genuine as the smile. He who would do such violence to his nature, insults its Creator, and would foolishly set himself above the example of the Redeemer. Instead of raising himself above humanity, he sinks

beneath its level. The brow that never wore a smile is not more unnatural than the eye that never glistened with a tear.

Therefore do we vindicate for the afflicted mourner the privilege of tears. You are not giving way to sin, when you are giving way to tears. Man is not disgracing his manhood, nor woman showing herself to be but a woman, when they weep under bereavement. Try not to be above the Saviour. It is not sin to mourn, but the sin is to murmur- -to fall into querulous repining as if God had wronged you, and it needed an effort on your part to forgive Him. We are sure that Jesus. harboured no grudge of this nature against His Father in heaven; and yet He wept. To forbid tears is to impose a cruel penance-is to deny a luxury to the mourner in which his Lord indulged. O thou of the bruised heart! when thou goest to the sepulchre where the beloved dust is garnered, weep, but not in dejection -weep, but repine not; disturb not the unbidden tear, as thou art in the place of burials. The dust thou sorrowest over cannot indeed respond; but the time is coming when thy tears shall be wiped away by the very hand that inflicted the stroke.

Whichever form of bereavement oppresses you, O be comforted by the thought that "Jesus wept "—that He who so wept is still unchanged in nature-that the heart which was so troubled is as susceptible now as then, and beats in unison and sympathy with you under such trials and sorrows. What a comforter is the Elder Brother, who knows what it is to be bereaved,

and will, out of such experience, soothe and solace His people! Nay more, for eighteen hundred years the Man Jesus has been employed in binding up the bleeding in heart, and healing all their wounds. Every variety of grief He has dealt with, and with every element and form of it He is perfectly familiar. If there be power in human sympathy to lighten the load of woe, O how much more in the sympathy of Him who "bore our griefs and carried our sorrows -whose words of comfort reach the heart-who gives Himself, to be loved in room of the object taken away-and gathers the departed into a blessed company before the throne, with the prospect of a happy and unclouded re-union! Let the mourner never forget the image of the weeping Saviour. O how it will re-assure him, and fill him with unspeakable consolation! Thou weepest but "JESUS WEPT !” *

HOW TO SYMPATHIZE WITH MOURNERS. REV. DR. CHARLES J. VAUGHAN, VICAR OF Doncaster. SORROW is a great test of truth. Nothing which has the slightest tinge of unreality, whether in the form of exaggeration or of affectation, has a chance of acceptance with persons in deep trouble. There must be, as a

* The Divine Love. By John Eadie, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature to the United Presbyterian Church. Second Edition. Edinburgh: W. Oliphant & Co.