be a spiritual service, and their hearts may glow in purer light than streams through painted windows. They may draw around the hearth of the farmer's homestead, and while the frost-king reigns outside, their spirits may burn with a warmth that may defy the keenness of the sternest winter. For them there may be a spiritual harvest more plentiful than the garnered store in the barn that has been lent for worship. On the gallant vessel's deck, with no witnesses of the service but the sky and the sea, there may be the sound of many waters as the Lord of hosts comes down. And in the Alpine solitudes, where the spirit, alone with God, mid murmuring streams, and bowing pines, and summits of eternal snow, uplifts its adoration, there may whisper a voice stiller and sweeter and more comforting than that of nature, saying, "Peace, peace be unto you." Oh, it is a beautiful thought, that in this, the last of the dispensations, the contrite heart can hallow its own temple! Wherever the emigrant wanders, wherever the exile pines,-in the dreariest Sahara, rarely tracked save by the Bedouin on his camel-on the banks of the rivers yet unknown to song-in the dense woodlands, where no axe has yet struck against the trees-in the dark ruin, in the foul cell, in the narrow street, on the swift rail-there, where business tramps and rattles --there, where sickness gasps and pinesanywhere in this wide, wide world, if there is a soul that wants to worship, there can be a hallowed altar and a present God. The Love of Jesus. How rich its manifestations, and how unfeigned; how all other love of which it is possible for you to conceive shrinks in the comparison! There have been developments in the histories of years of self-sacrificing affection, which has clung to the loved object amid hazard and suffering, and which has been ready even to offer up life in its behalf. Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, what lovely episodes their histories give us amid the history of selfishness and sin! Men have canonised them, partly because such instances are rare, and partly because they are like a dim hope of redemption looming from the ruins of the Fall. "Greater love hath no man than this" -this is the highest point which man can compass-" that a man lay down his life for his friend; but God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." A brother has sometimes made notable efforts to retrieve a brother's fortunes, but there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. A father has bared his breast to shield his offspring from danger, and a mother would gladly die for the offspring of her womb; but a father's affection may fail in its strength, and, yet more rarely, a mother's in its tenderness. "I saw an aged woman, bow'd 'Mid weariness and care; Time wrote in sorrow on her brow, "What was it that like sunbeam clear As, pressing towards her deafen'd ear, "What was it? Ask a mother's breast, By winter never froze. "What was it? Ask the King of kings, Who hath decreed above What change should mark all earthly things "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? She may forget, yet will I not forget thee." O Jesus of Nazareth, who can declare Thee? "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins." Think of that love-love which desertion could not abate-love which death could not destroylove which, for creatures hateful and hating one another, stooped to incarnation, suffering, and death; and then, with brimming eye and heart full of wonder, say, "Why such love to me?" The Cottage at Bethany. That cottage has no architectural pretensions. It peeps humbly through the embowering olives, beneath whose shade it stands. But never yet was human dwelling so highly honoured, for though many houses had entertained and welcomed Jesus, it was to Bethany that His footsteps oftenest turned; and there, where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus made up the united household, was the Saviour's human home. The evangelist has C Thrice not drawn for us the curtains of the Saviour's private life. We have not revealed to us the wealthy secrets of that friendship which communed with "the family that Jesus loved." We can only imagine, therefore, the happiness of those favoured ones who were privileged with His familiar teaching. blessed must have been that family: blessed in the strong love which welded diverse temperaments together in one bond of union which no discord could sever-blessed in their common anticipation of like gospel hope and privilege! No prancing cavalcade of honour was there attendant upon prince or chieftain; but who may say how often in the thickly-peopled air were hosts of angels watching and tracking with loving vigilance the steps of their incarnate God? But upon this brief dream of bliss there comes a rude awaking. The light glimmers pale through the dreary night from the window, and then sounds the voice of wailing from the dwelling where often rose the minstrelsy of blended voices in joyous song. Lazarus is sick, dying, dead. The light of their home is quenched beneath this unlooked-for sorrow. The memory of the happy past becomes almost in |