Unchanged thy words remain, That not one sinful soul should seek thy face in vain. Whom can I seek but thee? Thou hast borne the load so weary, No farther let me roam, But close to thee abide through all my journey home. Home with thyself at last! All grief and danger past, Forever safe and blest! Lord, I believe, I love, I enter into rest! ANON. CALVARY A BLAZE OF LOVE. When we look around on God's works, and see the laws by which they are regulated, the adaptation of part to part, the traces of design and exquisite workmanship everywhere visible, and how a presiding Spirit overrules the endless train of events, bringing light out of darkness, order out of confusion, good out of evil, we may well exclaim, Herein is wisdom! When we survey the vast masses that roll in space, giving light and heat in their appointed places at the appointed seasons, the mighty influences at work in nature, the thunders and lightnings, storms and winds, before which human power sinks into insignificance, and how these are ruled, as easily as the intention guides the hand, by that voice which says to the roaring sea, "Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," we may well exclaim, Herein is power! When we see the happy tendencies of things,bends over all, how all the creatures are made to minister to man's enjoyment, and how the wants of every living thing are satisfied by the exuberance of each returning year, and all this in the face of aggravated and unnumbered sins, we may well exclaim, Herein is goodness! When we travel in thought to that dark land where how the same heaven hope and opportunity are forever at an end, where death reigns in its most appalling forms, and nought is heard but the cries of tormented outcasts; and when we think, that, throughout ages innumerable as the drops of rain, there will be no abatement of their sorrow and no dawn of hope on their despair, we may well exclaim, Herein is justice! When we contemplate that heaven where God sits in the midst of a rejoicing family," a multitude which none can number, out of all tribes and kindreds and peoples and tongues and nations," — where all is light and love, and into whose pure transparencies "there shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth, or that worketh abomination, or that loveth or maketh a lie, but only they whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life," we may well exclaim, Herein is holiness! But it is when we turn to Calvary, and look at the Sufferer who there poured out his soul unto the death, amid tears and agonies and cries, and think that there the Son of God, himself the King eternal, immortal, and in visible, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, so that all the perfections of the Godhead were at once displayed and gloriously vindicated, that mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed each other, it is then we reach the climax of the song, and say, Herein is love! not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Calvary is one blaze of love. 66 ANON. CALVARY A MOTIVE TO PENITENCE. There have been developments in the histories of years of self-sacrificing affection, which has clung to the loved object amid. hazard and suffering, and which has been ready to offer up life even in its behalf. Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan, what lovely episodes their histories give us amid a history of selfishness and sin! Men have canonized them, partly because such instances are rare, and partly because they are like a dim hope of redemption looming from the ruins of the fall. We have it on inspired authority, indeed, "Greater love hath no man than this," this is the highest point which man can compass, this is the culminating point of that affection which man can by possibility attain, the apex of his loftiest pyramid goes no higher than this,-"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend; but God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." A brother has sometimes made notable efforts to retrieve a brother's fortunes, or to blanch his sullied honor; but there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. A father has bared his breast to shield his offspring from danger, and a mother would gladly die for the offspring of her womb; but a father's affection may fail in its strength, and yet more rarely a mother's in its tenderness. "I saw an aged woman bowed 'Mid weariness and care: Time wrote in sorrow on her brow, And 'mid her frosted hair. |