FORTITUDE AND CONFIDENCE.

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sion of the Faith with his blood. In this prayer he was graciously heard; and the much-enduring martyr at length entered into rest. Neither the day nor the year of the passion of St. Andrew has been precisely ascertained; but respectable authorities have decided in favour of November 30th, A.D. 69.

The body of St. Andrew, having been taken down from the cross, was embalmed and honourably interred by Maximilla, the wife of the Proconsul; and it lay in the tomb which her piety had prepared, until, as has just been said, it was transferred to Constantinople, and deposited in the Church of the Apostles, in the year 358.

We have already poetically illustrated that spirit of zeal and fraternal affection which led St. Andrew to spread the tidings of the Saviour as soon as He was discovered, and to make his brother Simon the first object of his solicitude. It remains to pay the tribute of a verse to that amazing and stupendous fortitude which bore the Apostle through an agony of two days' duration, every moment of which must have been a crisis of suffering.

We connect with this last scene of St. Andrew's life a poem which has no nominal or titular relation to the Apostle; but at least it offers a magnificent exposition of that faith and constancy of which he was so illustrious an example— of faith and constancy in circumstances trying beyond conception to the solitary human soul-the shivering of the elements, "the wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds." The poem we allude to is Campbell's "Last Man," in which, it may be said without prejudice to the stirring patriotism of his favourite lyrics, the author seems to have uttered all the concentrated grandeur of his intellect and imagination.

All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom

The Sun himself must die,

Before this mortal shall assume

Its immortality!

I saw a vision in my sleep,
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of time!

I saw the last of human mould,
That shall creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime.

The Sun's eye had a sickly glare,
The earth with age was wan;
The skeletons of nations were

Around that lonely man!

Some had expired in fight- the brands
Still rested in their bony hands-

In plague and famine some:

Earth's cities had no sound or tread,
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!

Yet prophet-like that lone one stood,
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood,
As if a storm passed by ;

Saying, "We are twins in death, proud Sun; "Thy face is cold, thy race is run,

'Tis mercy bids thee go:

For thou ten thousand thousand years
Hast seen the tide of human tears,

That shall no longer flow.

What though beneath thee man put forth
His pomp, his pride, his skill;

And arts that made fire, flood, and earth
The vassals of his will?

Yet mourn I not thy parted sway,
Thou dim, discrowned king of day;
For all those trophied arts,

And triumphs that beneath thee sprang
Healed not a passion or a pang

Entailed on human hearts.

Go, let oblivion's curtain fall

Upon the stage of men,
Nor with thy rising beams recall
Life's tragedy again :

Its piteous pageants bring not back,
Nor waken flesh upon the rack

Of pain anew to writhe;
Stretched in diseases' shapes abhorred,
Or mown in battle by the sword,
Like grass beneath the scythe.

Even I am weary in yon skies

To watch thy fading fire: Test of all sumless agonies,

Behold not me expire:

My lips that speak thy dirge of death,
Their rounded gasp and gurgling breath,
To see thou shalt not boast.

The eclipse of nature spreads my pall—
The majesty of darkness shall
Receive my parting ghost!

This spirit shall return to Him

That gave its heavenly spark;

Yet think not, Sun, it shall be dim,
When thou thyself art dark!

No! it shall live again and shine

In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath,

Who captive led captivity,
Who robbed the grave of victory,
And took the sting from death!

Go, Sun, while mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste,

To drink this last and bitter cup

Of grief that man shall taste-
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou sawest the last of Adam's race,
On earth's sepulchral clod,
The darkening universe defy
To quench his immortality,

Or shake his trust in God!

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St. Thomas the Apostle.

DECEMBER 21.

We saw Thee not, when Thou didst tread,
O Saviour, this our sinful earth;
Nor heard Thy voice restore the dead,

And wake them to a second birth;
But we believe that Thou didst come,
And quit for us Thy glorious home.

We were not with the faithful few,

Who stood Thy bitter cross around,— Nor heard Thy prayer for those who slew,

Nor felt that earthquake rock the ground;We saw no spear-wound pierce Thy side;— Yet we believe that Thou hast died.

No angel's message met our ear

On that first glorious Easter-day,The Lord is risen, He is not here; Come see the place where Jesus lay!" But we believe that Thou didst quell The banded powers of Death and Hell.

We saw Thee not return on high,

And now, our longing sight to bless,
No ray of glory from the sky

Shines down upon our wilderness;
Yet we believe that Thou art there,
And seek Thee, Lord, in praise and prayer.

Rugby Hymn Book.

PHASES OF DISCIPLESHIP.

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T. THOMAS, whose name, whether in its original form, or in that of its Greek equivalent, Didymus, signifies "a Twin," was probably a native of Galilee, and a fisherman; "for when St. Peter, after our Saviour's resurrection, thought fit to return to his former profession of fishing, to relieve his present necessities, Thomas bore him company.

It is open to remark that the Disciples, from different circumstances and from different causes, varied in their courage and devotion. Nearly every one of them in his turn shone forth with a greater brilliancy than the average run of his brethren; and nearly every one of them in his turn was dimmed by a passing cloud which did not eclipse the light of the others. On only one critical occasion did the same fault exhibit itself, for a short time, as a universal epidemic, when it is written of them that "all the disciples forsook Him and fled" (Matt. xxvi., 56). This 1s, perhaps, the only instance in which cowardice or selfseeking prudence on the part of the immediate Disciples of Christ, attained the proportions of absolute unanimity; whilst in other cases, there was always a larger or smaller number whose opinion could be brought to bear in the interests of right and justice upon the temporary representatives of excessive calculation, carnal ambition, or unenlighted and exclusive zeal.

It was at a moment when the Disciples were giving expression to an unbecoming anxiety for their Master's safety and their own, that Thomas stepped to the front with a grandeur of courage which ought to be at least as immortal as his reprobated scepticism-a scepticism which, reprobated as it may be, is yet one of the treasures of the Christian evidences.

The Evangelist St. John records that Jesus had been threatened with stoning by the Jews assembled at Jerusalem at the feast of the Dedication; from whose fury

*Nelson's Festivals and Fasts.