ert ourselves to give them rest from their labour, or seek to lessen the weight which presses upon their hearts ? We smile, perhaps, ourselves; but it is because at the moment our hearts are light; we speak kindly, but it is because we have no reason to speak otherwise; we take thought for their comfort, because it is a habit or a duty; but if we ourselves are suffering, where can we find a thought for them? Yet is this world a hospital, where they who tend and they who prescribe are themselves patients, and where the great Physician of all was once Himself the chiefest Sufferer.

The appalling aggregate of misery in the midst of which we are compelled to live, is formed by the pain and the grief of individuals, and can only be lessened by the efforts of individuals who must themselves swell its amount. Therefore was our Redeemer s life one long forgetfulness of His own pain; one long thought for the pain of those whom He came to save. The Love which, in agony, remembered His Blessed Mother, and thought upon the Beloved Disciple, was but the fuller example of the same Love which had bade Him journey, in weariness, from city to city, often without shelter, even at times without leisure to eat bread; that by teaching the ignorant, and healing the sick, He might soften the woes of a guilty world. In the hour of great anguish He felt, though He suffered; but it was because He had taught Himself to feel whilst He was suffering.

And we may learn to do likewise. Exertions

made in weariness, because others are weary also; kindness shown in illness, because others are alike suffering; self-restraints, which hide our own grief in the presence of greater,-these are the efforts by which, at length, we may teach ourselves thorough self-forgetfulness.

As the railing of the malefactor was the expression of human nature, so the tenderness of Christ was the expression of the Divine nature. Let us place our little cross beneath that of our merciful Saviour, and infinite as must be the distance between us, it may be that through His grace, by looking at Him, we shall learn to be like Him.

THE DUE REWARD OF OUR DEEDS.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 40, 41.

"But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due rewards of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss."

"WE receive the due reward of our deeds! That sounds like a natural acknowledgment of a selfevident truth; yet a deep lesson must have been learnt before it was made, and one which, if we look into our own hearts, we shall probably find we have by no means acquired ourselves. There is nothing-literally nothing, which we are so slow in learning, as the justice of punishment. Hell is far more a matter of faith than heaven; and even after years of wilful sin men will not admit it to be their due reward.

There can indeed be no doubt that every offence is increased in exact proportion to the condition of the Being against whom it is committed. A sin against an Infinite Being must therefore, we may say, be an Infinite sin, demanding an Infinite punishment, or an Infinite atonement. But whilst

we thus speak we use words which we do not understand, and even if they were understood, there are other and subtler questions to perplex us, which on this side the grave can never be solved.

Our fears and our wishes do in fact confuse our reason, which would otherwise clearly teach us to put all such questions aside. For standing apart, looking, as we may imagine an angel might look, -upon this fallen world; seeing the total ignorance of mankind, as to many of the elementary facts of nature, and the utter incapacity of the human intellect to comprehend that which is Divine;-we should naturally argue that in accepting the evidence of revelation, we necessarily accept its doctrines; and that when God says that He will inflict a certain punishment upon sinners, the very fact of the threat is sufficient, according to the common rules upon which we daily act, to render us liable to it if we disregard it.

When a warning is given, there can at least be no injustice towards the individual who sets it at defiance, and suffers in consequence. And it is a fearful thought that at the last Great Day, we may seek to save ourselves from our doom by saying that we could not see how the sins we had committed could deserve so awful a punishment, and be met with the reply that our ignorance in no way lessened our responsibility; that the words which speak of Hell do unquestionably tell of an awful punishment awaiting the sinner, and

that when once heard or read, they rendered us answerable for the acts by which we had incurred

it.

But the hardness of the human heart needs a stronger power than reason to subdue it to the acknowledgment of its own deserts. We accept in faith, but we cannot bring ourselves to feel that punishment so great is the due, the inevitable reward, of our deeds. Let us then for a moment take our own view of the case, and ask ourselves, -if, after wilful sin, whether great or small, we do not deserve eternal punishment, what is it we do deserve?

Is it God's love? Not the love which is bestowed upon all whom He creates, and which we may think is inseparably connected with the act of creation, but the individual love, which may perhaps be more rightly termed His favour-does wilful sin deserve this? If not, then it deserves the contrary. To be out of God's favour; what does it involve? There are thousands, millions, who do not care to think. The sun shines as brightly, the air is as pure, the forests are as green, the flowers as radiant, to the sinner as to the saint. If conscience speaks too loudly, there are excitements to drown it; if the heart sinks in lonely terror, there are friends to cheer it. Men buy and sell, they eat and drink, they marry and are given in marriage; and life is so precious, and the world, even in its ruined state, so fair, that they can afford, or think they can afford, to stifle the inquiry. Only