And now that we have, by God's mercy, been brought to the beginning of another year, let us all strive to improve it to His glory. Which of us shall live to see the end of it? According to the common average of deaths, it is reasonable to suppose that five or six of us who are met together now will have closed our eyes for ever on this world before next New Year's Day! Oh! may it please GOD, for CHRIST's sake, that whichever of us are taken we "may be found of HIм in peace, without spot and blameless!" May HE give us grace to work "while it is day :" for "the night cometh, when no man can work !"2

T. B. B.

12 St. Peter iii. 14.

2 St. John ix. 4.

SERMON XIX.

RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN.

A Sermon for Schools.

ST. MATT. II. 17, 18.

THEN WAS FULFILLED THAT WHICH WAS SPOKEN BY JEREMY THE PROPHET, SAYING, IN RAMA WAS THERE A VOICE HEARD, LAMENTATION, AND WEEPING, AND GREAT MOURNING,

RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN, AND WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED, BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT.

SAINT Matthew, beyond the other Evangelists, is careful to show how ancient prophecy was fulfilled in the several events of the life of our Blessed LORD. Of His birth, he says, "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the LORD by the Prophet." Of the sojourn in Egypt: "Joseph was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the LORD by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my SON." And so in the text: when Herod had sent forth and slain the babes of Bethlehem, "then," says the Evangelist, "was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation,

and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."

I wish to draw your attention to these words, both in their historical and their prophetic applications; with reference both to the political calamities which befel Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah; and to the domestic affliction that filled Bethlehem with maternal mourning as related by St. Matthew.

I. Let us first consider the text with reference to the events recorded by the prophet. These occurred during the invasion of Judea and the siege of Jerusalem, by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. This was one of that series of invasions which ended in the total captivity of the people for seventy years. "In the ninth year of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the tenth month, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army against Jerusalem, and they besieged it. And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up. And the Chaldeans burned the king's house, and the houses of the people with fire, and brake down the walls of Jerusalem. Then Nebuzar-adan, the captain of the guard, carried away captive into Babylon the remnant of the people that remained in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to him, with the rest of the people that remained." And previously to their deportation, he collected them at Rama, a town of Benjamin.

There were several towns and villages of this name in Palestine: as Rama, a city of Naphtali; Rama, a town of Gilead; and Rama, where the prophet Samuel was buried. The Rama of the text, as we have said, was a town in the allotment of Benjamin. It was on

the way from Jerusalem to Bethel; being, according to St. Jerome, about six Roman miles north of the former place.

Here it was that Nebuzar-adan collected his captives here, therefore, was heard the voice of lamentation and bitter weeping, on the part of the mothers of Judea, when they beheld the dispersion of their families, the slaughter of many of their children, the captivity of those who had escaped the sword. And well might they lament and weep! Under all circumstances, the stroke of death, as it descends upon its immediate victim, inflicts, with its obliquer edge, wounds of no slight severity upon the surviving friends and relatives. But oh! how keen that edge, how severe those wounds, when those who die are not the time-worn fathers or the aged mothers of their race, whose natural hour of death is come; but the young, the lusty, and the strong, who have but just begun to live! In the former case, the hour-glass has gently run out to its last sands; in the latter, it is suddenly dashed in pieces. When children consign their parents to the tomb, they mourn with an earnest but a measured grief: but when parents bury their children in a premature grave, it is with a bitter and despairing anguish that refuses to be comforted. Now this is the case in war. War is death's festival. That enemy of our race is wont to devour his victims secretly, and one by one. But when he hunts with the dogs of war, he spreads his banquet-table in the face of nations; and feasts, with unsated appetite, on thousands, and yet thousands of our race. And of these thousands nearly all are young. In peace, says the father of history, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children. And therefore was

it, in the war between Judea and Babylon, wherein the Chaldean monarch "slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden," that the mothers of Judah and Benjamin lifted up in Rama the voice of lamentation and bitter weeping, refusing to be comforted for their children, because they were

not.

And as Rama, as we have observed, lay within the allotment of the tribe of Benjamin; the prophet, to heighten our conception of the distress, represents no less a person than Rachel herself, the general mother of that tribe, as disturbed from the slumbers of the grave, and coming out of her silent resting-place, to weep and lament over her slaughtered and captured progeny. This image becomes yet more apt and expressive when we revert to the personal history of Rachel. During her lifetime, children were a pain and grief to her. For many years she was childless. But to be "a mother of children," was the dearest wish of every Hebrew woman's heart; for which of them might not hope to transmit the race from which the promised Woman's SEED should hereafter spring? and therefore Rachel, the wife of one who expressly inherited the promise, envious of her more favoured sister Leah, passionately exclaimed on one occasion, “Give me children, or else I die!" And when, afterwards, two children were given to her, the birth of the second proved fatal to her own life; and, "as her soul was departing," she called her new-born babe, "Benoni; " that is, the son of my sorrow. According to the figurative language of the prophet, sorrow on account of children pursues her even into the grave; and after the lapse of more than twelve hundred years,