tles sanctions and explains another part of this society's operations. Its office is to observe, to record, and to reward acts of self-devotion. Certain scales of reward are given to one who risks his life to save life, to the surgeon whose skill restores life, to the publican who opens his house to receive the apparently dead body. And every year lists of names are published of those who have been thus distinguished by their humanity. The eyes of the society are over all England, and no heroic act can pass unnoticed or unhonored by them.

Now distinctly understand on what principle this is done. It is an apostolic office. It is precisely the principle on which the apostles were appointed by God to record the acts and life of Christ. Was this for Christ's sake? Nay, it was for the world's good. That sacrifice of Christ recorded, pronounced Divine, has been the spring and life of innumerable sacrifices and unknown self-devotion.

And so the rewards given by this society are not given as recompense. Think you that a medal can pay self-devotion? or a few pounds liquidate the debt due to generosity? or even, that the thought of the reward would lead a man to plunge into the water to save life, who would not have plunged in without any hope of reward? No! But it is good for the world to hear of what is generous and good. It is good to appropriate rewards to such acts, in order to set the standard. It is right that, in a country where enormous subscriptions are collected, and monuments are erected to men who have made fortunes by speculation, there should be some visible, tangible recognition of the worth and value of more generous deeds.

The medal over the fire-place of the poor fisherman is to him a title; and, truer than most titles, it tells what has been done. It descends an heirloom to the family, saying to the children, Be brave, self-sacrificing, as your father was.

3. It was a spirit of perseverance.

They laughed Him to scorn, yet He persisted. Slow, calm perseverance amidst ridicule.

In the progress of this society we find, again, a parallel. When the idea of resuscitation was first promulgated, it was met with incredulity and ridicule. Even in 1773, when Dr. Hawes laid the first foundation of the Humane Society, it was with difficulty he could overcome the prejudice which existed against the idea, and he had to bear the whole cost of demonstrating the practicability of his theory. For one whole year he paid all the rewards and expenses himself, and then, attracted by the self-sacrificing ardor with which he

had given himself up to the idea of rescuing human life, thirty-two gentlemen, his own and Dr. Cogan's friends, united together in furtherance of this benevolent design, and thus laid the foundation of the Humane Society.

Here note the attractive power of self-denying work; the Redeemer's life and death has been the living power of the world's work, of the world's life.

XXVII.

THREE TIMES IN A NATION'S HISTORY.

"And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, say ing, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall east a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."-Luke xix. 41-44.

THE event of which we have just read took place in the last year of our Redeemer's life. For nearly four years He had been preaching the Gospel. His pilgrim life was drawing to a close; yet no one looking at the outward circumstances of that journey would have imagined that He was on His way to die. It was far more like a triumphal journey, for a rejoicing multitude heralded His way to Jerusalem with shouts "Hosanna to the Son of David!" He trod, too, a road green with palm branches, and strewn with their gar. ments; and yet in the midst of all this joy, as if rejoicing were not for Him, the Man of Sorrows paused to weep.

There is something significant and characteristic in that peculiar tone of melancholy which pervaded the Redeemer's intercourse with man. We read of but one occasion on which He rejoiced, and then only in spirit. He did not shrink from occasions of human joy, for He attended the marriage-feast; yet even there the solemn remark, appa rently out of place, was heard—“ Mine hour is not yet come." There was in Him that peculiarity which we find more or less in all the purest, most thoughtful minds-a shade of melancholy; much of sadness; though none of austerity. For, after all, when we come to look at this life of ours, whatever may be its outward appearance, in the depths of it there is great seriousness; the externalities of it may seem to be

joy and brightness, but in the deep beneath there is a strange, stern aspect. It may be that the human race is on its way to good, but the victory hitherto gained is so small that we can scarcely rejoice over it. It may be that human nature is progressing, but that progress has been but slowly mak ing, through years and centuries of blood. And therefore contemplating all this, and penetrating beyond the time of the present joy, the Redeemer wept, not for Himself, but for that devoted city.

He was then on the Mount of Olives; beneath Him there lay the metropolis of Judea, with the Temple in full sight; the towers and the walls of Jerusalem flashing back the brightness of an Oriental sky. The Redeemer knew that she was doomed, and therefore with tears He pronounced her coming fate: "The days shall come that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and shall not leave in thee one stone upon another." These words, which rang the funeral knell of Jerusalem, tell out in our ears this day a solemn lesson; they tell us that in the history of nations, and also, it may be, in the personal history of individuals, there are three times a time of grace, a time of blindness, and a time of judgment.

This then, is our subject-the three times in a nation's history. When the Redeemer spake, it was for Jerusalem the time of blindness; the time of grace was past; that of judgment was to come.

We take these three in order: first, the time of grace. We find it expressed here in three different modes: first, "in this thy day;" then, "the things which belong to thy peace;" and thirdly," the time of thy visitation." And from this we understand the meaning of a time of grace; it was Jerusalem's time of opportunity. The time in which the Redeemer appeared was that in which faith was almost worn He found men with their faces turned backward to the past, instead of forward to the future. They were as children clinging to the garments of a relation they have lost; life there was not, faith there was not-only the garments of a past belief. He found them groaning under the dominion of Rome; rising up against it, and thinking it their worst evil.

out.

The coldest hour of ali the night is that which immediately precedes the dawn, and in that darkest hour of Jerusalem's night her light beamed forth; her wisest and greatest came in the midst of her, almost unknown, born under the law, to emancipate those who were groaning under the law. His life, the day of His preaching, was Jerusalem's time of grace.

During that time the Redeemer spake the things which be longed to her peace: those things were few and simple. He found her people mourning under political degradation. He· told them that political degradation does not degrade the man; the only thing that can degrade a man is slavery to sin. He told men who were looking merely to the past, no longer to look thither and say that Abraham was their father, for that God could raise up out of those stones children to Abraham, and a greater than Abraham was there. He told them also not to look for some future deliverer, for deliverance was already come. They asked Him when the kingdom of God should come; He told them they were not to ery, Lo here! or, lo there! for the kingdom of God was within; that they were to begin the kingdom of God now, by each man becoming individually more holy, that if each man so reformed his own soul, the reformation of the kingdom would soon spread around them. They came to Him complaining of the Roman tribute; He asked for a piece of money, and said, "Render unto Cæsar the things that be Cæsar's, and to God the things that be God's;"-plainly telling them that the bondage from which men were to be delivered was not an earthly, but a spiritual bondage. He drew the distinction sharply between happiness and blessedness-the two things are opposite, although not necessarily contrary. He told them, "Blessed are the meek! Blessed are the poor in spirit!"" The mourning man, and the poor man, and the persecuted man--these were not happy, if happiness consists in the gratification of all our desires; but they were blessed beyond all earthly blessedness, for happiness is but the contentment of desire, while blessedness is the satisfaction of those aspirations which have God alone for their end and aim.

All these things were rejected by the nation. They were rejected first by the priests. They knew not that the mind of the age in which they lived was in advance of the tra ditional Judaism, and, therefore, they looked upon the Re deemer as an irreverent, ungodly man, a sabbath-breaker. He was rejected by the rulers, who did not understand that in righteousness alone are governments to subsist, and, there fore, when He demanded of them justice, mercy, truth, they looked upon Him as a revolutionizer. He was rejected like. wise by the people-that people ever ready to listen to any demagogue promising them earthly grandeur. They who on this occasion called out, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and were content to do so, so long as they believed He intended to lead them to personal comfort and enjoyment, afterwards

cried out, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" "His blood be on us, and on our children;" so that His rejection was the act of the whole nation. Now, respecting this day of grace we have two remarks to make.

First in this advent of the Redeemer there was nothing outwardly remarkable to the men of that day. It was almost nothing. Of all the historians of that period, few indeed are found to mention it. This is a thing which we at this day can scarcely understand; for to us the blessed advent of our Lord is the brightest page in the world's history: but to them it was far otherwise. Remember, for one moment, what the advent of our Lord was to all outward appearance. He seemed, let it be said reverently, to the rulers of those days, a fanatical freethinker. They heard of His miracles, but they appeared nothing remarkable to them; there was nothing there on which to fasten their attention. They heard that some of the populace had been led away, and now and then, it may be, some of His words reached their ears, but to them they were hard to be understood-full of mystery, or else they roused every evil passion in their hearts, so stern and uncompromising was the morality they taught. They put aside these words in that brief period, and the day of grace passed.

And just such as this is God's visitation to us. Generally, the day of God's visitation is not a day very remarkable outwardly. Bereavements, sorrows no doubt, in these God speaks; but there are other occasions far more quiet and unobtrusive, but which are yet plainly days of grace. A scruple which others do not see, a doubt coming into the mind respecting some views held sacred by the popular creed, a sense of heart-loneliness and solitariness, a feeling of awful misgiving when the future lies open before us, the dread feeling of an eternal godlessness, for men who are living godless lives now -these silent moments unmarked, these are the moments in which the Eternal is speaking to our souls.

Once more that day of Jerusalem's visitation--her day of grace-was short. It was narrowed up into the short space of three years and a half. After that, God still pleaded with individuals; but the national cause, as a cause, wag gone. Jerusalem's doom was sealed when He pronounced those words. Again, there is a lesson, a principle for us: God's day of visitation is frequently short. A few actions often decide the destiny of individuals, because they give a desti nation and form to habits; they settle the tone and form of the mind from which there will be in this life no alteration. So it is in the earliest history of our species. In those mys