terrace and alcove a scene, God-ordered, and sparkling with his very light and beauty; but how we were deceived! We find it but a cemetery-grassy turf on graves, with urns full of ashes here and there a broken column and cenotaph, that does not even tell us where the body of the departed lies. "Vanity of vanities -so we scorn it. "Creatures made subject to vanity "so bitterly we speak of ourselves. But yonder there will be neither consuming memories, nor boding fears. Once pass the portals of the inheritance, and you are safe for ever. It would be unparadised by thought of change or end. Its still waters always flow; its flowers always bloom. Its rest remaineth. Its knowledge grows; its purity shines; its friendships embrace for ever. Its God lives, an everlasting light; and in his presence is fulness of joy and pleasure for evermore

"Reserved in heaven."

How should the possession of the lively hope upbear the soul of the believer beneath present experience of trial! The inheritance is not now in possession. It is reserved in heaven. The Christian is not exempted from present visitations of sorrow. He becomes "acquainted with grief," as was his Master. It is necessary for his discipline, for his growth of soul, for the evolution of his perfect character, that it should be so; not as an arbitrary allotment, but as an arrangement, benign and effectual. It is "through much tribulation" that we enter the kingdom. In the haste and eagerness of spiritual youth, this necessity comes upon us as a new disappointment; but experience

chastens our impetuosity, and we feel that when we have companied with stranger trials, we have, like Abraham, been entertaining angels unawares. Oh ! there is many a grateful spirit which has learned to sing

"I thought that the course of the pilgrim to heaven

Would be bright as the summer and glad as the morn ;'
God showed me the path, it was dark and uneven,
All rugged with rock and all tangled with thorn.

I dreamed of celestial reward and renown;

I asked for the triumph which blesses the brave;
I asked for the palm-branch, the robe, and the crown;
I asked, and thou showedst me a cross and a grave.
Subdued and instructed, at length, to thy will,

My hopes and my longings I fain would resign.
Oh, give me the heart that can wait and be still,
Nor know of a wish or a pleasure but thine.”

Rather

The lively hope! How it should comfort the mourners, even in the time of their intensest sorrow! It is no sin to weep for the loss of friends. it were sin not to weep, when God himself has scooped out the channel for our tears. Religion does not erect herself upon the ruins of nature. She looks upon a Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted in Ramah, and she has no word of rebuke for the mourning mother. She bids you listen to a bereaved father, sitting in all the majestic loneliness of sorrow: "Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" And then she takes you to the tomb of Lazarus, and, in the touching poetry in which St. John has painted that interesting scene, she tells you that "Jesus wept." But the Christian must not be conformed to the world even in his grief. He must not sorrow as those that have no hope. We

have not looked our last upon our friends. We shall see them again, not as we last saw them upon earth ―emaciate, feeble, plague-stricken, infirm-but in a beauty that is stainless and unfading, and in a youth which defies the years. I have known a case in which a mother mourned her son—a profligate, a criminal— and yet the hope sustained her, gave sublimity to her faith and intensity to her prayers, and encouraged her through humiliation, disgrace, degeneracy, and public shame, to grasp the promise and to hold on to the undying word. If in circumstances of such sharp contrast to those of the mourners of to-day the religion failed not of its comfort, what are your sources of consolation-yours, who mourn a son of fragrant reputation, "who wore the white flower of a blameless life," who was affectionate to you and dutiful to God; in whom the love of Christ burned, and the zeal of holy labour dwelt like a consuming fire; who never made an enemy, and never lost a friend; who left the witness that he rejoiced in dying, and has now, through the merit of the Redeemer, passed through death triumphant home? Therefore, dear friends, comfort one another in this your hour of trial with these words.

XXVI.

GOD'S PRESENCE IN GOD'S REST.

“Arise, O Lord, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength. Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy."-Ps. cxxxii. 8, 9.

IN

N the psalm before us this prayer stands in a kind of central position-central to the need which prompted it on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the bountiful answer which it received. We shall most profitably study it in this connection, and shall be most likely to extract its wealth, that we may coin it into currency for the pressing needs of to-day.

Opinions are divided as to the authorship of the psalm, and as to the time at which it was composed. From its place in the book we may judge that the compilers ranked it among those nameless pilgrimsongs, some of which were wailed forth by the rivers of Babylon, and some of which celebrated the return. from exile.

Others, however, students of these beautiful mysterics regard it as the composition of David, or, with more reason, of Solomon; and assert that it was composed, either on the occasion of the removal of the ark, or of the completion of the temple. That, whenever written, there is in it a reference to that glorious offering unto

God, is evident from the close coincidence between the prayer in the text, and the words of Solomon before he "made an end of praying." You remember that scene with its bowed worshippers, and suspended service, and down-darting flame, and the overspreading glory of the Lord-one of the most marvellous displays of divine power and grace which the Scriptures record. It was the swift answer to their invocation, "Now therefore arise, O Lord God, into thy resting place, thou, and the ark of thy strength; let thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let thy saints rejoice in goodness" (2 Chron. vi. 41).

We do not err, therefore, in believing that the psalm has a special appropriateness to such occasions as that which has gathered us to-day.

I confess I like to think of Solomon as the writer of the psalm; partly because I long to find anything redeeming in the character of that prince, both in wisdom and in folly; and partly because of the beautiful self-forgetfulness of the opening cry unto God, "Lord, remember David and all his afflictions." It was seemly; it was filially reverent for Solomon thus to pray. And it was right. It was only tracing back the river to its source. The temple was Solomon's handiwork, but it was David's thought-wrought out, elaborated, crystallized into marble, and stone, and gold. Honour to the brain which conceives, rather than to the hand which but executes the conception by plan and plummet and rule. Where were the victor's palm, if the subtle thought of the commander were not marshalled on the tented field? If the sower cease from his painful steps and lonely toil, there