when you visit his grave, if the Son of God be not present with his sympathy? Learn from the case of Mary and Martha of what importance it is, when a brother dies, to have a brother in Christ to bespeak the heart with the fraternal assurance—“I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” Lazarus is not deadhe only sleepeth. He shall wake again, and that not long hence. Twice blessed they those sisters and brothers-of whose union the common brotherhood of Christ is the principal bond. There is little brotherhood else worth the having; the sweeter it is at present, the more bitter will it make the cup of death. And oh, that Eternity! It cannot but be that ungodly sisters and brothers, how affectionate soever here, shall assail one another there, with the most bitter recriminations, that they were so cruel to one another's souls, without mutual warning, as without mutual encouragement and help in respect of one another's best, eternal interests. So will it be for ungodly spouses; so for all ungodly companions and friends. Deceive yourself not with the imagination that though you should fall under the judgment of God, you will at least have sympathetic friends with you to mitigate the affliction of that region of woe; one of its greatest torments will be the mutual recriminations of those who were once the dearest friends. Tell me not, then, of the peace and love of your family circle, unless you can tell me of more—even that the Son of God is that common kinsman in whom your mutual affection is heightened, sanctified, and rendered perpetual, without apprehension that it shall ever be dissolved. Such was the love of the cottage of Bethany. Thirdly, We are called to admire the fortitude of this family. To be associated with Christ in any form, in those days of his humiliation and persecution, required firmness and courage of character; but to be known and marked as the family who gave him the shelter and hospitality of their dwelling required fortitude as well as affection in a higher than ordinary degree. Christ loves the bold heart, for he himself was bold. And how does not the bravery of these weakly women, in those times of scorn and danger, expose the cowardice of many who will boast of their independence, and yet be so afraid of the laugh of the infidel or profligate, as to manage that they will enter and retire from the company without having excited the suspicion, either by a look or a word, that they held the name of Jesus in the least respect! Let such beware of deceiving themselves with the thought that, notwithstanding, he may reveal himself very intimately to their hearts in secret. I repeat that his delight is with the bold and brave. Fourthly, Let us now look at the three separately. First, there is Martha. She gets far too little credit for her excellence. Reflect, she is the head of the house, and that it is to her principally that Christ was indebted for its shelter and hospitality. It is distinctly said, "that a certain woman named Martha received him into her house" (Luke x, 38). To call her worldly-minded, then, is an imputation as absurd as it is ungenerous. In her love of Christ she risked the loss of all through the persecution of his enemies. That which was wrong with her, and for which she was gently rebuked, was, that on that particular occasion she was cumbering herself too much with her household arrangements-proper enough at other times-but attention to which she should have relaxed, and taken more advantage of the opportunity of his presence to have her mind enlightened in divine truth. That opportunity Mary eagerly cultivated, and showed herself thereby to be at the time the more spiritualized of the two, though Martha seems to have profited by the rebuke; for at the time of the death of Lazarus, both her conduct and the confessions of her faith excel those of Mary. As for Lazarus, he must have grown up to man's estate, for Christ calls him friend Lazarus, which he could scarcely have done had he been a child or mere boy. From this we conclude that he was weakly in body, possibly weakly in mind; for otherwise he would have been made an apostle. Whatever may be the case, he must have been peculiarly amiable, and warmly attached to Christ; for Christ loved him with special endearment. Such was the family which Jesus loved, and with whom he had his most intimate and endearing communion. I might make the practical appeal in this way-Are our families such? Do we strive to make them such? But I turn it this wayLet each of us imagine we were in these olden times at Jerusalem, and heard that Jesus was at Bethany, would we have left in the evening, and made our journey to that cottage and endeavoured to get entrance? "My immortal brother, this is a dispensation of diadems. In the Christian warfare each may win a crown. Some of Christ's soldiers around me yonder in the distant south, are winning crowns more lovely and precious than the island groups in those coral seas, and more glorious than the glittering stars of the Southern Cross, or the glorious worlds of the Milky Way."Eternal Life, by Graham of Sydney. 182 ALONE, YET NOT ALONE.* THE feeling of loneliness is perhaps one of the most painful that ever dwelt in the human breast. It tells of the midnight traveller who has lost his way among the mountains, and, encompassed by the storm and far from home, is left to die alone. It speaks of the shipwrecked mariner, cast upon some desolate shore, who alone of all the crew survives, but who is left to pine away his days in solitude, cut off by the raging main from friend and country. Man was not made to be alone; and though some, by constitution and habit, are inclined to be more in society than others, there is no sane man but would find it difficult entirely to relinquish it. As in the case of all the other characteristic features of humanity, so specially in the case of this one, we find it present in him who is distinctively "the Son of Man." Our Lord had a great work to do on earth. He had to face the world's sin, and overcome it; * In the beautiful cemetery belonging to Hamilton, a town in Lanarkshire, ten miles from Glasgow, a handsome tombstone may be seen, bearing the following inscription : Erected By a number of friends To The memory of JOHN FRAME, M.A., B.D., United Presbyterian Church. And greatly beloved as a man. He is mourned by all who knew him, and most by those who knew him best. "The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." The young man whose remains lie beneath that stone, and whose early removal so many mourn, had been for a number of years suffering, at intervals, under some mysterious form of brain disease, a severe attack of which was no doubt the occasion of his sad end. It was stated in the public prints that religious melancholy was the cause of the catastrophe ; but the paper here given will show that he was no stranger to the only source of peace. It was written shortly before the crisis came; it is slightly curtailed, and, with a few verbal alterations, it is given as it was written. A peculiar interest attaches to it from the circumstance that it was his last public utterance, and was greatly enjoyed by those who heard it. In a day or two after the earthly sun of this young man of rare promise went down in darkness, to rise, we hope, in that better home on high, into which_a_foe shall never enter, and from which a friend shall never go away. J. F.-E. yet in the midst of it all, or perhaps as part of it, he lived in . friendly communion with those around him. Witness his presence at the marriage in Cana, and the honour which he thus conferred upon one of the dearest of earthly relationships; his calling of the twelve disciples, and the intimate life he led with them; and the frequent visits he paid to the beloved family at Bethany. Truly it was a human heart which our Lord possessed a heart throbbing with the life blood of our race a heart glowing with love and sympathy for his brethren of mankind, and craving a return of the same from them. And hence, when Gethsemane and the cross were nigh at hand, and their dark shadows were casting a gloom upon his soul, he exclaimed, "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." Throughout all his earthly history, Christ was in great measure alone-bereft of human sympathy. He had such a work to perform, and such a road to traverse, as no son of the human race had except himself. None could enter into the large thoughts of love and life that possessed him. And though, during the whole course of his public ministry hitherto, he had the society of his disciples, yet in their capacities and attainments they could only be as mere children to him. They clung to his garments, and shared in his outer life; but they could not enter into the deep thoughts of his heart and inner life. He had the battle to fight alone. Still, to a loving soul like Jesus, the sympathy and confidence of these simple disciples was something not to be despised, however imperfectly they understood him. And when now to his prophetic eye the day appeared as not far distant when, in his last and bitterest trials, they who had so long stood by him would forsake him, the fact weighed heavily upon his mind, and he said to them-"Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." But note the consolation Christ has in his solitariness"Alone, yet not alone, because the Father is with me." Many a time in his history, when misunderstood by friends, persecuted by foes, or besieged by temptations, had he fled to this refuge. Had he not continued at times whole nights in prayer ? And, in default of human support, had he not received the ministrations of angels? So now, in his last extremity, he betakes himself to the same refuge. In that dark valley which he is about to enter he must fight alone. His weak disciples will be scared away in sight of the foe. But yet he will not be alone, for the Father is with him. He does not say God will be with him. He realizes God as the Father present with all the timely counsel, aid, and encouragement which a good father ever gives to his child in the path of duty. What was true of Christ is true also of his followers; and so on various accounts, and on various occasions, we may be left alone of man, and yet be able to say with Christ—“ Alone, yet not alone, because the Father is with us." This may be our experience in the event of bereavement. The feeling of loneliness creeps over us in the loss of one dear friend, even though others are left to mourn with us. Not, indeed, on our first sustaining it. We can scarcely realize, as we gaze on the familiar form, now cold in death, that we are to see him in life no more. Not even when the funereal rites have been paid to his remains do we realize the loss. It is only when we have returned to the routine of ordinary life that we miss our friend. When we have to transact the business alone in which he formerly took part, and lock the door without his presence within, the feeling of loneliness creeps over us. But this feeling is increased when, instead of one, we have to mourn the loss of many friends. Trials ofttimes do not come singly, but in groups; and a man now surrounded by many friends may, by one fell swoop of the destroyer, be suddenly bereft of all and left alone. This is no imaginary picture, but a fact of daily experience. Is it not true, too, that the longer we live in the world we have the more losses to mourn over in this way, so that the aged patriarch, white with the snows of a hundred winters, bereft of all his old friends and comrades, stands on the brink of the grave positively alone? Alone, yet not alone, for the Father may be with him. Amid all our bereavements we may have the conscious presence of our Father in heaven: for he never leaves nor forsakes his people. Nay, in the time of sore trial he makes his gracious presence more vividly felt. This may be our experience, too, in the time of sickness. Among the thousand ills that flesh is heir to there are some forms of disease in which all the avenues of sense are closed. The man can no longer hold converse with the surrounding world. The mind may be conscious within, but it is shut up as in a prison-house, and where the feeling of loneliness is therefore specially present. Even in any ordinary kind of sickness this feeling may be experienced. Any sickness that is not at all grievous drives a man from his ordinary mode of life, and not unfrequently stretches him upon a bed of pain. He is visited by friends anxious for his welfare; and when he looks upon their hale and hearty appearance, and then thinks of his own sickly condition, he feels lonely. True, his friends are |