Ju his Sorrows.

Take up the cross and follow me."-MARK x. 21.

"MAN that is born of a woman is of few de73 and full of trouble." "All his days are corrows, and his travail grief." "Because then hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursel is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." This is a fact which no one can deny, with the only explanation that ever has been given. No one can deny the fact: and if they deny the explanation, they can substitute no other in its stead. Infidenty may reject, and folly may despise the narrative of the fall, and treat affliction as if it came forth of the dust, and sorrow as if it sprang out of the ground; but no man has attempted to deny that he is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. What is

the history of the world but a continued comment on this primeval curse? From Jacob, who, in the simplicity of patriarchal life, looked back upon his years, and found them few and evil, to the king of Israel, who, in the plenitude of luxury and knowledge, declared there was nothing but sorrow under the sun; from the secret complaint of the captive, obscurely carved upon his prison walls, to the suicidal stroke of the hero that becomes an item in the tables of chronology; what is the history of man but a development of this bad. beginning? In every chronicler's story-in every poet's song-in every philosopher's argument, sorrow is the longest and most interesting chapter, for it is that which finds a response in every human bosom. And the world has subsisted now six thousand years, and man has found no remedy; the sentence is not remitted-his sorrows are not diminished. Experience has perfected his faculties and increased his powers-a thousand inventions and discoveries have added to his natural capabilities improvements of every kind-the growth of arts-the increase of knowledge

the experience of accumulated ages-all is indicative of progress to the present time; in one thing only there is no progression-man has found no defence, no security from sorrow, every new source of enjoyment has opened a fresh inlet of suffering to the heart, but never a weapon to defend the entry. Parents still see their children break their hearts and die. Children still see the gray hairs of their parents brought with sorrow to the grave. The most gifted, the most admired of men still rush desperately into eternity, because they cannot bear the weight of misery that is upon them. Never, perhaps, was there so much suffering world as at the present time, when contrivance has exhausted itself to increase our means and powers of enjoyment. We "go out one way against the enemy, and flee before him seven ways." The art that removes one danger introduces another; science outroots an old disease, and a new one takes its place. "That which the palmer-worm hath left, hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left, hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left, hath the cat

erpillar eaten." Man may turn the current of his sorrows, but he cannot lessen them. And when we consider this, together with the extraordinary powers over nature which he seems to possess, there is no way of understanding it, the researches of philosophy, the observation of ages have found no way of accounting for it, but by those revealed words—" In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." We may say to the unbeliever, If it is not so, how is it? And if he were honest, he would own his mouth is closed. He who pronounces the curse can alone explain it; and no remedy can be found for it but that which has proceeded whence the curse was issued: none has prevailed to lighten it but he who laid it on.

Of the cup thus filled for all men, there was one who drank so much more deeply than the rest, he has been emphatically called "the man of sorrows," as if there were no other. "His face was more marred than any man's." "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief

and we hid as it were our faces fron. him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living." Born under the curse and imputation of sin, the Son of God was made liable to every sorrow to which sin has subjected us, except the consciousness of having committed it, and the pain proceeding from its actual commission. Tho, it is evident, he could not feel. The writhing of wounded pride, the yearnings of unsatisfied ambition, the blank of bereaved idolatry, the bitterness of remorse, and the chill of deserved shame-these and the thousand scorpion stings with which sin torments the bosom it inhabits, a pure and holy being could not feel. Do they whose draughts of bitterness are thus cour