that no present imagination can give us a foretaste of them. Be that as it may, God has not left us without light to guide and hope to cheer us. He bids us 66 weep for ourselves," but He shows us also how those who have wept before us have at length been comforted.

It is indeed the rule of life generally, that no man profits by any experience but his own; yet there is one kind of experience which may perhaps be considered an exception. It is that gained at the deathbeds of those who "die in the Lord, who rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." Few persons probably have attained mature age without having had some experience granted them. It may not be published in excited language to the world, and made a means of worldly profit; it may not be told to our friends, or even spoken of to the nearest and dearest by our own fireside; but it lives, treasured in our hearts; the one thought of strength when faith grows weak; the one ray of light, when life is dark and troubled.

They who have gone before us in suffering, they whose footsteps we have followed with sympathy, as the mourning women followed the footsteps of their Redeemer, have left with us a blessing which they little thought of;-a strength even in the very spectacle of their weakness. All those hours of lingering pain at which we so wondered, asking perhaps in moments of unbelief whether God could indeed love those whom He so afflicted, were hours of untold value, for they were tracing the record of

that mighty strength by which the saints of God are enabled to wait with patience "the appointed time, until their change come." All the words and looks of faith and love were prophecies and promises of the Spirit of faith and love, who will be at hand when we need His aid. The gradual lessening of their earthly cares, which made us marvel as we watched the change that passed over them, the calm acquiescence in God's Will, the bright hope, the present realisation of future happiness; they were all treasures gathered for our use, which no effort could have purchased, no gladness of this world have procured for us.

Therefore are they memories infinitely precious. Bought with the sufferings of Christ they are hallowed in their measure as those sacred memories from which the women of Jerusalem may have found strength in their own hour of trial: and therefore also will we call them no longer memories, but actual, ever-living means of participation in the blessed communion of saints; facts, words, scenes, now our own in loving thought, hereafter to be our own-God grant it—in loving feeling.

PRAISE AND ADMIRATION

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 32.

"And there were also two other, malefactors, led with Him to be put to death."

THIS is another verse which we read continually without thought, but which implies a whole volume of suffering and degradation. To be led away with malefactors, to be reckoned with them, to know that our name was numbered with theirs; how horrible it would have been even to us—in the sight of God— malefactors ourselves! What it was to our blessed Saviour we cannot venture to imagine; we know only that He had all the keen human feelings which would make such an association agony; and all the Divine knowledge of the guiltiness of guilt which would render it abhorrent to Him as being absolutely and immeasurably antagonistic to his nature.

We do not think of this as we ought when considering the circumstances of our Lord's trial. All that He underwent, has become to us so sacred, so worthy of all reverence, that we forget that it did not appear to be so at the time when He en

dured it; and that in this especially the Cup of which He drank had a bitterness peculiarly its own. Suffering with us generally involves a certain amount of dignity. However poor and wretched an individual may be, if we hear that he is enduring intense pain of body, or grief of mind, we look on him with awe, amounting to respect. But there was no respect excited by our Redeemer's death of torture. It was not even singular or exceptional; cruel, though we deem it, it was common, and shared with the lowest and vilest; and many, perhaps, in the vast crowd, who had collected, as men always will collect at any spectacle of horror, scarcely distinguished Him from the malefactors at His side.

To think of this strikes at the root of all pride whether of action or endurance, and there is in the world as much of the latter as of the former. If we wish to be like Christ, there can be no desire for distinction of any kind. And there are minds for which this caution is much needed;-there are self-willed martyrs, who will unflinchingly endure any amount of suffering if only the eye of their fellow-creatures may follow them with admiration; whilst, even amongst those who have no such morbid desire for distinction, the same feeling will be found, more or less, to exist. Why is it so easy to be self-denying in society, so difficult to be so in our own homes? Why do we find individuals famed for actions of benevolence, devoting fortune, and time, and physical strength, to works of public

good, yet failing in the charities of private life? Why do we so often, if called upon to bear any unusual trial, solace and support ourselves by the thought that there are those looking on upon our lives who are admiring and respecting us?

We may not, indeed, think little of that support when it is offered by the good and the holy. Even our Redeemer, we may believe, may have been soothed by the reverent, though sorrowing, gaze of His Virgin Mother, and the awe-struck sympathy of His beloved disciple. It is not the respect of the few, but the admiration of the many, which is our stumbling-block; and even then the danger lies less in the acknowledged and admitted praise or admiration which may be offered us, than in the vague atmosphere of admiration which we breathe without perceiving it, and in which, unknown to ourselves, our actions find the spring of their life. The admiration of an individual startles us; it comes before us in a definite shape, and appeals to our conscience for a witness, which conscience is unable to give; and perhaps, we are enabled to reject it, whilst shrinking from the voice of flattery, we cast ourselves on our knees before God, praying that, for Christ's sake, He would support us in the Day of Shame, when the secrets of our hearts must be revealed. But the admiration of the world generally, comes to us in no such guise; it takes no particular form; it brings us no precise offering, which we may satisfy ourselves by refusing; it creeps into our hearts, and sullies our