The Master's word comes ringing from afar, And the sad Past's tear-blotted, sin-stained pages

Are lit with brightness from the Bethlehem-star.

The sightless stranger by the wayside crying,
The lonely widow of her son bereft,

The helpless cripple at Bethesda lying,
The leper, by his nearest kindred left, —

These were His brethren.

To one certain haven

We voyage on across the same deep sea, And upon every brow alike is graven

The common seal of our humanity.

Levite and priest may look and pass unheeding,
Nor care to claim the brotherhood divine;
But when our brother by the way lies bleeding,
Ours be the hands to pour in oil and wine!

J. B. MUNRO.

REST AND JOY.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you."

JOHN xiv. 27.

HE world proposes rest by the removal of

THE

a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." Christ does not promise a rest of inaction, neither that the thorns shall be converted into roses, nor that the trials of life shall be removed. It matters not in what circumstances men are, whether high or low, never shall the Rest of Christ be found in ease and self-gratification; never, throughout eternity, will there be rest found in a life of freedom from duty. The paradise of the sluggard, where there

is no exertion, the heaven of the coward, where

there is no difficulty to be opposed, is not the Rest of Christ. "Take my yoke upon you." Nay, if God could give us a heaven like that, it would be but misery. The curse on this world is labor; but to him who labors earnestly and truly, it turns to blessedness.

It is not the lake locked in ice that suggests repose, but the river moving on calmly and rapidly in silent majesty and strength. It is not the cattle lying in the sun, but the eagle cleaving the air with fixed pinions, that gives you the idea of repose combined with strength and motion. In creation, the Rest of God is exhibited as a sense of Power which nothing wearies. When chaos burst into harmony, so to speak, God had Rest.

There are two deep principles in Nature in apparent contradiction, one, the aspiration after perfection, the other, the longing after repose. In the harmony of these lies the rest of the soul of man. There have been times when we have