of the scenes at the house of Simon the leper and in the streets of Jerusalem. We can not linger too long upon them. It was the brief pause before the storm. Jesus at the supper may have sat between Lazarus, just from the grave, and Simon, whom, no doubt, he had made a recent trophy of his miraculous power. Lazarus had just come from the other world. Jesus was on his swift way thither. Lazarus had been given back to the sorrowing household, by One who was about to be torn away from them by cruel hands. Love reigned at the feast. Martha served and Mary served. But Mary's service will never be forgotten.

"From every house the neighbors met.

The streets were filled with joyful sound.

A solemn gladness even crowned
The purple brows of Olivet.

GENTILES SEEKING JESUS.

JOHN XII. 20-36.

"And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the feast,” etc.

THAT there was especial importance attached to this fact, and to the simple request made by these men through Philip (of the Grecian name), appears from more than one feature of the narrative. The answer which the Master makes, so stirred in its emotion and so profound in its meaning, the struggle and the prayer which followed it, could hardly have been called forth by any mere summons of curiosity, or even of devout expectancy; and the voice from heaven, if like the voice as heard before, marks a time of critical importance in the life of the Son of man. To these we may add also the meditation of the evangelist, which follows, and which is a sort of summing up of the whole effect of the ministry of Jesus. We come, then, with peculiar interest to inquire into the significance of this visit and request, and of the answer it received.

These Greeks were not heathen Gentiles. They were proselytes of the gate, who were in the habit of coming up to the feasts at Jerusalem. Doubtless many came to trade and to visit at such times. These came to worship: devout Greeks, doubtless, like those named elsewhere in the New Testament. If all they wanted was to look upon

the Master, they needed not to ask Philip. What they wanted, doubtless, was an introduction and an interview,

something more than Zaccheus desired when "he wanted to see Jesus, who he was.'

It has been suggested that their errand was to invite him to go with them among their own people, and be a teacher among them, as he had been among the Jews; and that from the prospect of a grand success, such as he had not known in Israel, such as it was reserved for the Apostle Peter to inaugurate, and for the Apostle Paul to carry to its glorious completion, it stirred him to the depths of his heart to turn away to the only glorifying which could await him in the way that was before him,the coming to glory by the cross and the grave. Interesting and possible as such a suggestion is, it is not hinted in the record. There is a more simple and more natural connection. This coming of the Greeks with the desire to see him and to know him in person, reminds him of the way in which he is to reach those whom they represent, as he reaches all men, by that which he is to accomplish for them and in them through his death. It brings to mind that which is only two days before him, and which had been so clearly in his mind and so plainly on his lips as he came up to the feast. He will make known to them the mystery of his mission and its culmination in his death. So in a tone of lofty reverie, rather than of explanation or address, he gives them opportunity to learn of him.

The time draws near for the completion of his work. Their very coming reminds him of it. The wise men from the far East, as well as the shepherds of Israel, welcomed him to earth. The star silently beckoned the former, while the angel's voice guided the latter, to the manger.

So now the Jewish multitude had welcomed him to the city of David, and the Greeks also desire to see Jesus. His work is for the world.

But how? He is speaking to simple men, in whose minds he may only hope to lodge an illustration or a principle. He is to save them, not by his teaching, not by his leadership, but by his death. Can they get that idea? You know how wheat comes to its glory. You try to preserve it, and it makes no increase. You might seal it from the air, and it would keep a thousand years unchanged. But put it in the moist, warm ground. It degenerates, to all appearance. It decays. It comes to dishonor and to loss. But bye and bye the tiny spear of greenness begins to push its way up to the sunshine. The stalk grows strong and firm, and at length its golden tassel glitters in the day, and the single grain has multiplied itself fifty-fold. When its time has come for glorifying, it must be through the renunciation of its present life.

And this, says Jesus, is the general principle by which all life comes to its truest glory. If you make your present life your supreme object, you will lose it. You will lose it by reason of its transientness. You can not keep it, if you try never so hard. If you do not sacrifice it for what is better, it will be taken from you anyhow. The cry of Micah the Bethlehemite is heard through all the ages, "Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and what have I more?"

You lose it in its value. If it could be perpetuated in your possession, it would shrink and dwindle in your keeping. If your interest is centred on this life, it is centred on a diminishing object. The life grows small and sterile which regards its present estate alone. Childhood which

clings to its toys, youth to its pleasures, manhood to its enterprises, or old age to its rest, finds them less and less satisfying.

You lose it in its reality. He that loveth his life or soul shall lose it. His natural endowment of rational life, the life breathed into him of God, which made of him a living soul, — it may be lost, will be, if you seek to save it first and most. It will be lost either by losing all which makes it worth the keeping, or lost by its everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. Selfishness

is sin and death. It leads to dwindling and destruction. On the other hand, self-sacrifice is the way to self-preservation; for it leads to a new and better kind of life. The grain of wheat which dies is glorified. The mother's love which bears all things for her child's sake brings the mother to her deepest joy, and transforms her into an angel of unselfishness. Under its discipline her natural love becomes the love of principle, a thousand times more true and sweet than that which it replaces.

Natural danger even, met in a manly way, lifts quite prosaic men to heights of heroism which would have been thought utterly unattainable for such as they. Men throw themselves into labors for the moral reform or religious renewal of their fellows; and they not only save life, but elevate its quality, in others and in themselves. So their lives become glorified, and a holy influence surrounds them like a halo.

But all lower illustrations are as nothing when we can look at the example of the Lord Jesus himself. He knew what was before him. He realized all the grief and pain which were to come. But the dark cloud could not hide from him the one great object of his life. He saw both