The napkin thus folded, or as the Greek expresses it, rolled together, implies the faculty or perception of order, the ability of changing the form and position of things, and of distinguishing the difference when thus changed. It denotes active, operative, effective intelligence, and therefore denotes life.

The Saviour was alive-had shaken off the sleep of death, and as if to be employed while the commissioned angel rolls away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, he calmly rolls together that which was about his head, and gently lays it aside, the speechless witness of his triumph over death and hell. Pilate, at the suggestion of malignant chief priests and infidel Pharasees, made sure the door with seal and watch; yet boasted Roman honor could be swoped for a lying bribe-a picked and chosen guard be made to say, "His disciples came by night and stole him away." Jesus knew that in the wickedness of their unbelieving hearts they would seek to crucify the truth of his resurrection as they did his body, and therefore to overthrow the statement of these Roman liars, he 'folded together the napkin and laid it in a place by itself. Disciples nor thieves would have had time nor care for such scrupulous nicety when an armed guard lay sleeping at the door.

We have here then the first proof of the resurrection of Christ -a proof in itself so simple and modest; so silent and yet so expressive, so humanely divine and divinely human, that the stoutest heart comes down, and like Mary, stands without the sepulchre weeping. I can with Moses before the burning bush, hide my face and fear to look upon God; or with the terrorstricken Israelite amid the thundering and lightning, the noise of the trumpet and the smoking mountain, the thick darkness and the trembling camp-stand afar off and be still, and know that God is God; but when I contemplate the atoning Lamb, the Resurrection and the Life--within that petrean vault, in awful silence and majestic loveliness, calmly rolling together his napkin and placing aside to itself, to assure his weeping friends that he was again with them-there comes before me a scene of impressive tenderness, human kindness, heart-touching, soul-absorbing interest, far, far above all grandeur and sublimity, and equalled only at Gethsemane and the Passion.

Nor did he quit the tomb as a conqueror, flushed with victory, and eager to catch the plaudits of the admiring multitude; but that his friends may gather comfort there, he puts aside with sweet composure a part of his burial clothes-as a token of remembrance and love. As he lay aside his crown of glory in the kingdom of his Father, so now he lays aside the napkin,

that he may regain that crown more bright and dazzling with the lustre of countless souls redeemed from sin and death. He would weep no more; he no more needed a napkin; his drops of blood-his cries of anguish-his stripes and torments-all, all are left in the tomb, and going up to Olivet, the heavens open and the angel throng, whose song of "peace on earth and good will towards men," proclaimed the babe of Bethlehem, now chant their immortal strains as he sits at the right hand of the Father. The Saviour left the napkin and the linen clothes because he would die no more. He left them that we may so learn to divest ourselves of our corruption as to be ready to meet him at his second coming.

Weep a little longer, Christian; let sorrow fill your heart, and tears fill your eyes. But look up steadfastly up-see! a rainbow of hope and promise-it springs from the sepulchre to to the throne on high. Yet weep not, but rejoice-rejoice in the gift of all truth, and especially for the doctrine of the Resurrection. Give thanks-give thanks to Christ, THE Resurrection God.

SWEET THOUGHT.

WHENEVER We find our temper ruffled toward a parent, a wife, a sister, or brother, we should pause and think, that in some few months or years they will be in the spirit land, watching over us, or perchance that we shall be there watching over them left behind. The intercourse of life between dear ones, should be like that between guardian angels. As charming Hunt sings;

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us and we could bear

To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours

His eyes divine, and bring us from his bowers

News of dear friends, and children who have never

Been dead indeed-as we shall know for ever,

Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths-angels that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air-
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

NIGHT.

BY JAMES MONTGOMERY.

NIGHT is the time for rest;

How sweet when labors close,

To gather round an aching breast

The curtain of repose,

Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head
Down on our own delightful bed.

Night is the time for dreams;

The gay romance of life,

When truth that is, and truth that seems,

Mix in fantastic strife;

Ah! visions less beguiling far

Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil;

To plough the classic field,

Intent to find the buried spoil

Its wealthy furrows yield;

Till all is ours that sages taught,

That poets sang, and heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep;

To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory,
The joys of other years;

where sleep

Hopes, that were angels at their birth,
But died when young like things of earth.

Night is the time to watch;

O'er ocean's dark expanse,
To hail the Pleiades, or catch

The full moon's earliest glance,

That brings into the homesick mind

All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;
Brooding on hours misspent,
To see the spectre of Despair

Come to our lonely tent;

Like Brutas, midst his slumbering host,

Summon'd to die by Cæsar's ghost.

Night is the time to think;

When, from the eye, the soul

Takes flight, and on the utmost brink

Of yonder starry pole,

Discerns beyond the abyss of night

The dawn of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray;

Our Saviour oft withdrew

To desert mountains far away;

So will his followers do,

Steal from his throng to haunts untrod,

And commune there alone with GOD.

Night is the time for death;

When all around is peace,

Calmly to yield the weary breath,
From sin and suffering cease,

Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign

To parting friends; such death be mine!

m

THE BIRDS OF THE BIBLE.

THE BIRDS OF THE BIBLE.

BY REV. H. HARBAUGH,

"Praise Him flying fowl."-Ps. CXLVIII, X.

BIRDS are living, winged flowers-shining gems in the sun-lit As their home is in higher realms, so sea of air above us. they are more highly interesting, than any other part of the lower creation. Gems may shine with colors as brilliant as they, but gems cannot fly, and thus exhibit in their movements all the lights and shades of which the combination of colors is capable. Flowers may be as beautiful in tints, and as graceful in formation, but flowers cannot sing! Who does not love birds?

We all associate with some of them sweet and cherished associations of early life. How they used to sing early in the morning, in the trees around the house-how they hurried with many a chirp and flutter from stake to stake before us, as we went forth to our labor-how they swung, in mowing-time, on tall weeds or on taller swinging tree-tops-how they floated gracefully, leisurely, serenely and high in the warm blue air-how they passed in droves away over the sober landscape of autumn: and how we fancied that they formed the letters of the alphabet in flying, while we watched them till they were lost in the dim, distant blue-then dropped our eyes with a sigh which meant, Alas! they are gone, the beautiful birds!

Much of our childhood comes back with the birds that sang around the homestead. They seem like old friends, when they come for a moment near us; and when they hurry again as hastily away, it causes us to remember that other friends have flown before! We find, too, that as there is in all the world "no place like home," so there are no birds which sang so sweetly as those which sang before our window "in life's happy morning" when our feelings were young. May it be remarked by the way, we never could see either the sense, the reason, or the up at poetry there is in caging foreign birds and hanging them the door. What do they sing that concerns us? The heart heareth not the voice of a stranger! I would rather hear a blue-bird than a canary-I would rather hear a crow!-spirits of Fashion, how I shall be anathematized!-than a parrot. Why? Because my mother and I heard these together, before I believed that birds were truer than men; because then, too, like Ossian, "I hear a voice, pleasant and mournful, It is the voice of years gone by. They roll before me with all their deeds!"

Thus incidentally we arrive at the reason why those birds which are mentioned in the Bible are most interesting to us. They bring with them, not only pleasant, but sacred associations. They are the birds which sang in Paradise, which hovered around the tents of the Patriarchs, which cheered the Prophets in the desert, and which gave sweet response to the shepherd's song amid the scenes of pastoral peace and pleasure in the rural regions of the Holy Land.

Then, too, how many sweet and impressive teachings from God, do they drop from their wings, as they fly over us, or sit and sing around us. If the plague of the leprosy-the symbol of sin-is in any house; then shall the priest take "two birds, one of which he shall slay, and with a hyssop-branch sprinkle the house with its blood, "and he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird" that is slain; "but he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house and it shall be clean." What meaneth this? We know that

No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast,

Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest,

can take away the leprosy of sin; but we know that they can, and do point to ONE who can do it. As the one bird died that lepers might not die, and the other lived that lepers might live; so Christ died and lived that in death those might still live who receive the atonement.-Lev. XIV.

:

The bird, and the snare which the fowler lays for it, is often alluded to; and much warning and instruction are derived from it. Saints, looking back upon their previous state of danger, exclaim with joy, "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped."-Ps. 124 7. There is also allusion to the sagacity which birds. show in discovering the snare, and avoiding it. Some birds are remarkably wary and awake; they think much less of their food than they do of their safety, and hence put their feet forward with caution. If young persons do the same, intimates the wise man, then the snare is spread in vain for them.-Prov. 1, 17. The prophet makes use of the same illustration to show that the greatest danger of falling into evil results from the dispositions of others to entrap us. There is in each man an instinctive love of life and its good, so that he avoids danger; but he is generally led into it by the secret allurements of such as wish to use him for their own selfish interests. "Can a bird fall into a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him?"Amos 3: 5. We need not, however, assume that those who ensnare