race, ready to wield the weapons of our warfare with a firmer and more skilful hand.

These intervals of brightness, then, are the true seasons for labour. These earnests of the morning should be prized as opportunities specially afforded us by God for strenuous labour. If thus laid out, how blessed will they be found! They are brief, for tribulation is our lot on earth, not ease; but this should only arouse to new vigour; for if they be thus brief, we have no moments to idle away.

But it is here that so many stumble. In trial they call upon the Lord and vow their life to him. Through evil report and good they will follow him; on the rough way or the smooth they will walk with him; by labour, by sacrifice, by watchfulness, by costly gifts, they will prove their love, and zeal, and constancy! Good words and sincerely spoken! But so were the words of the disciple, "If I should die with thee, I

will not deny thee in any wise." He spoke what he truly felt, but when the hour came, the resolution was not to be found. So with us. Trial calls forth many a high thought and prompts to noble purposes. Yet how seldom do these thoughts ripen; how often do these purposes die! Peace returns, sunshine brightens over us, our broken strength knits again, and we sink back into sloth! The calm hour for which we longed, that we might do something for God, has come, but it finds us nearly as heedless and selfish as before we entered into the storm.

This must not be. Why were we smitten, but just that we might be stirred up? And why were we delivered, but just that we might work more strenuously, more efficaciously? How sad, then, that both the trial and the enlargement should fail of their purposed end!

These times of enlargement are times of light and gladness. In these mornings

It is not the mere

it is not mere

joy has come to us. reaction from sorrow; familiarity with suffering; it is not oblivion of the past; it is not the calm of over-spent feeling. It is joy from the Lord. And "the joy of the Lord is our strength." He who gave us the night has given us also the morning. He who called up the storm has brought back the calm. So that it is his joy in which we rejoice; and this joy is our strength. Let not this strength lie idle. The calm will not last; the clouds will soon return; and it concerns us to lay out well the brief hour of light. "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work."

CHAPTER V.

THE MORNING-STAR.

It was 66

very early in the morning," while it was yet dark," that Jesus rose from the dead. Not the sun, but only the morning-star, shone upon his opening tomb. The shadows had not fled, the citizens of Jerusalem had not awoke. It was still night-the hour of sleep and of darkness, when he arose. Nor did his rising break the slumbers of the city.

So it shall be " very early in the morning," when "it is yet dark," and when nought but the morning-star is shining, that Christ's body, the church, shall arise. Like him, his saints shall awake when the children of the night and darkness

are still sleeping their sleep of death. In their arising they disturb no one. The world hears not the voice that summons them, or if it hears, shall only say, "It thunders," as did the unbelieving Jews when the Father's voice responded to the prayer of Jesus. (John xii. 29.) As Jesus laid them quietly to rest, each in his own still tomb, like children in the arms of their mother; so, as quietly, as gently, shall he awake them when the hour arrives.

He is the Morning-star. "I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning-star." (Rev. xxii. 16.) And this name is given to him not only because of the glory of his person and the brightness of his appearing, but because of the time when he is to appear.

The first act, at his appearing, when he comes in glory, the first indication of his arrival, while yet aloft "in the air," is likened to the shining of the morning-star.