Memories of Bethany

Ma

she hastens back to the house with the announcement, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Mary hears, but makes

rth could rend

hangeless brow.

rble

maiden

neliness sank

lips breathed out

mmon

of Martha, been shrinking from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered, and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen hurry

urial-place are all with the humiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken from the earthly entrance of the valley, not the heavenly view of it as that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay flowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the bereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the fo

h, giving vent to the wild delirium of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given. Is there not the same music in that name-the same solace and joy in that presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when death has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid them in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and broken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian friendship. Those, it may be, little known before (c

t bereavement has laid bare. But Jesus can! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities in that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the profoundest sorrow. While from the best of earthly comforters the mind turns away unsatisfied; while the buri

is the finite sympathy of a finite creature. The Redeemer's sympathy is that of the perfect Man and the infinite God-able to enter into a

s. Not undervaluing human sympathy, yet, nevertheless, all the crowd of sympathising frien

re found hastening to cast ourselves at our Saviour's feet; if our afflictions prove to us like angel messengers from the inner sanctuary-calling us from friends, home,

us God has in all His dealings, to lead

eart-to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort in the bitter cup-to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to po

mist's words on her tongue-"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so pa