no power over us but what we are pleased to give him. Why should Christ rob himself of his purchased possession? How can He change, or tire, or forget us, who is the " same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever?" If we lose this blessed sympathy, it is because we ourselves throw it away. No hand can cut us off from Christ but our own. Yet He is God as well as man, and the comfort of his presence consists mainly in this, that He is able as well as willing to save. How often have we to confess, sadly, if not bitterly, the helplessness of mere sympathy. It is useless to inquire, when the end is just the same, which is the more mortifying, will without power, or power without will. But our Master, Christ, has both. St. Paul had learned not only his Lord's tenderness, but also his strength. "Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, for when I am weak, then am I strong." Let us learn with the apostle that the presence of Christ means the sympathy of a kind friend, and the help of a strong one; the right arm and right hand of one who, rejoicing with us when we rejoice, and weeping with us when we weep, can cover our head in the day of battle. When pain is sharp, when illness is tedious, when hopes are disappointed, when temptation is strong, when "the enemy comes in like a flood," and we cry out "all these things are against me," then let our question be, "Is anything too hard for the Lord ?" Then let our consolation be, "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

For though He is not now on earth to tell us, face to face, of his love, He comes to us, He speaks with us through his Spirit. "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. It is the Spirit's work to glorify Jesus. "He shall receive of mine, and show it unto you." It is our privilege to receive the Spirit, and we are bidden to be filled with Him; and who shall say, what light and joy, what liberty and holiness, what power and usefulness might be ours, if we would but believe. Yet this is just what we will not do. Christ's sympathy seems much less real, and much farther off than man's; and Christ's power, which is possible enough when we read of it in an inspired book, seems impossible when we try to apply it to our present difficulties, and our hearts are so full of earthly cares and earthly possessions, that once more it is true, "There is no room for him in the inn." Oh, our inconsistency and insincerity! Oh! the deliberateness with which we deceive ourselves! Oh the resoluteness with which we set ourselves to the utterly impossible task of following Christ without taking up the cross! could but make up our mind to decide on one or the other, and to be honest about it; either to choose Christ and to be altogether Christians, or to choose Mammon, and to be altogether for this world, there would be gain each way, and no one would be disappointed or deceived. But now Christ loses, the Church loses, the world loses; and, as to ourselves, even if at last we are saved, as through the fire, what a loss of peace now, and of glory to come!

If we

Christ's presence is always blessed, for the still

moments and for the noisy moments, when we are at work and when we are at rest, when we mourn and when we sing. "Abide with us for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent," is ever the devout utterance of all true hearts to Him; when is there a moment, when we can afford to lose Him, or that He can be an intrusive guest ?

Yet there are times when we specially need Him, and when, therefore, He specially offers himself. How much we read in the Bible about fear, and how continually we are there warned against it. For though fear, like anger, is an original element of our nature, and "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom," there is much fear that dishonours God and debases and enfeebles men. The greatest of the saints have had their moments of fear. Abram feared, when he went down into Egypt; Moses, when God sent him to Pharaoh; Elijah, when he fled from Jezebel. One of the grandest passages in the Old Testament is the Divine expostulation with Israel : "I, even I, am He that comforteth you: who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the Son of Man which shall be made as grass, and forgettest the Lord thy Maker ?" One of the most blessed promises in the Old Testament is in the book of the same prophet: "Fear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."

Perhaps the most common, and human, and reasonable of all kinds of fear is the fear of death. Yet even here, as the Psalmist tells us, the Divine Presence is sufficient. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'

The expression, 66 shadow of death," occurs eleven times in Scripture, viz., five times in Job, four times in the Psalms, once in Jeremiah, once in Amos; and we are yet more familiar with the image through its introduction into the "Pilgrim's Progress," where Christian after his victory ever Apollyon, and long before he reaches the Celestial City, passes through the valley with terrible conflict, and is joined by Faithful soon after he comes out. I have called the fear of death reasonable, and it is surely fair to say so, if love of life is a Divinely ordered law for us, and|| if but for that fear men would rush much oftener than they do into its mysterious darkness with all their sins on their head. The great bulk of men, indeed, whom youth and vigour seem to separate from it by an almost infinite interval, seldom think of it, will not look at it; and what we steadily ignore can hardly cause us acute alarm. Besides, it is hard really to face it until it faces us. Human nature will not needlessly, cannot easily, by mere force of fancy, or in the gratuitous indulgence of a morbid whim, lay itself down with Charles V. within the narrow walls of a tomb, to dramatise its dissolution. Only, when sentence of death is pronounced, and we feel that there is no postponing it, do we rouse ourselves in

earnest to think what it must really be. And then, let us confess, it is a dark valley that opens out before us, and many ghastly shadows are flitting through it; it is a real enemy, and it must be conquered; it is something more than the mere fluttering of the wing of the impatient spirit, it is somewhat harder than the unconscious dropping of the garment of our mortality; we will not overrate it, but we will not despise it; and if in a few rare natures there be the sublime spectacle of triumph in death; if some, through the exceeding vividness of their faith, and the ardour of their hope, and the intenseness of their love long for it, and welcome it, it will be safer for most of us to wait quietly till it comes, knowing who bids it come, neither shrinking from it in unmanly terror, nor rushing to meet it in hysteric joy. Sometimes the bitterness of death is passed long before we die; Hopeful, as he forded the river, could think of nothing but the glorious land beyond; and if there are more "Christians "" than 'Hopefuls," when the shore is won at last, who will count the billows passed?" | "Thou art with me:" this is all we care for; it is the presence of Christ that robs death of its sting.

We shall see this more clearly if, first, we briefly inquire what there is to fear in death, and then consider how the Saviour's presence chases that fear away. Death means loss, solitude, and retribution. Certainly it is loss, loss of all we know and possess, and enjoy, and love. It is loss of the blue sky, and the sweet flowers, and the rolling sea, and the purple hills; it is loss of home with its living treasures, of life with its stirring activities, of science with its secrets, and art with its skill; it is loss of the joy of travel, of the rapture of music, of the society of books; it is loss of the fireside of winter, of the sweet freshness of the summer morning, of the ripeness of autumn, of the greenness of spring. And then (unless the hurrying away be more premature still) just when the enjoyment of these things is deepening, and our possessions are accumulating, as the dreams of youth solidify into the occupations of manhood, as the heat and burden of the day give place in their turn to the repose and memories of age; when the tide of life is at its full, when the pinnacle is reached, the prize won, the fortune made, the children reared; when our mistakes are forgotten, and our errors condoned, when neighbours esteem us, and strangers respect us; when we have learned (after innumerable failures) in some slight degree how to conquer self, how to use money, how to do good without doing harm, how to choose the right way without first going the wrong; at the moment when we are most capable of making others happy by our kindness, and good by our example, and wise by our experience. The enemy who has been waiting for us ever since we were born, and who was content to wait, knowing that we could not escape him, comes to fetch us away; and we must go. "Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand breadth : and mine eye is as nothing before thee; verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity."

Of

Death is also solitude. "Je mourrai seul." course all sorrow is solitary. For though the outward facts and features of our sorrow be identical with those of other men's, and produce some effects which are

common to the race, one man's moral nature is so different to another man's, and the shafts which pierce us are so variously aimed, so differently weighted, that each of us, besides what he endures in common with his fellows, has his own pain, which no one else can suffer quite in the same way.

But in death there is a solitude, which exists in no other kind of sorrow, for we only die once; and not one of the friends, who stand by watching us, can know, from personal experience, what dying means. Possibly they have been very near it. They may have stood on the edge of the dark river, and its cold waves may have washed over their feet; they may have taken their last farewells, and set their house in order, and looked right into the Eternal world. But they did not die, and to expect death is not the same thing as to endure it. For the first time, perhaps, in all our lives we are starting on a journey which we must travel alone; and those who most wish to be with us, and whom we, too, most wish for, must stay behind, while we go on. They can bless us, they can tell us of their sweet and passionate and undying love; they can pray, and the last sound we hear is the name of Him who is the Resurrection and the Life; but the end of it is that we go, and they stay, and never is human love felt to be more utterly impotent than when it watches an ebbing life.

And death means retribution. "For God shall bring every work into judgment, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." It is quite true that conscience does not always wake up before death, and Lord Bacon has observed that there is not a single quality in our moral nature, which has not at some time or other mastered the fear to die. But it is also true, that in a great multitude of instances conscience at such times does make cowards of us; and when it is too late to do what we ought to have done, and to repent of what we ought not to have done, prayer is but the spasm of a panic,- -we fear hell, not God. And yet, not only to the unforgiven and impenitent soul, drifting helplessly on towards its final doom, is the thought of death a thing of sadness; it is often, oh ! often, both a humiliation and a bitterness to the soul, which long before had cast its sins on Christ, and found rest and peace through his blood. Life come to an end, and so little done in it! Siu still so strong, the world still so powerful, self still so dominant, prayer still so hard! We recall past opportunities, and feel how sinfully we have neglected them; this soul and that soul have come in our way, and we did not even try to do them good. How much money we have wasted on vanity: how little we have denied ourselves to spare for Christ or his kingdom. Talking, listening, planning, beginning! Oh! of that there has been an abundance; but what will there be to show Christ when He returns, of actual finished work, that will stand the fire?

Yet even in death "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." "Thou art with me," said David, and we have yet the more sure word of the New Testament. "Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,

that is, the devil; and deliver them, who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

For if death is loss, Christ can make up for it ten thousand fold. Is our earthly life ended? He gives us a long life, even for ever and ever. Does death sever us from those we love on earth ? Christ unites us to those we love in heaven. He takes us from sin to sinlessness, from perfect weakness to perfect strength, from restlessness to rest, from faith to sight, from men to angels, from cold prayers to the song that ceases not day nor night, from a world lying in wickedness to the just made perfect in sight of the Throne. If Christ cannot, or will not do all this for us, then He is nothing to us, and why do we believe on Him? If He can, and will, "to die is gain."

As to solitude, who knows so much of solitude in life as the Man of Sorrows? Who has tasted so bitterly of solitude in death as He who said of himself by the Prophet, "I have trodden the wine-press alone"? His life was eminently one long solitude in its condition and nature, in its aims and purposes, in its hopes and fears. Not only by his enemies, but by his disciples, not only by his disciples, but by his brethren, not only by his brethren, but by his mother, was He hindered, and disappointed, and misunderstood. Prayer was the only real interruption of his loneliness; and when He died, there was but one Apostle to stand by his cross.

Oh, the solitude of death is filled with Jesus! He knows it all, for He has tasted it all. He who has died that He might save us, is with us, when He has saved us to sustain us in the dizziness of our fainting consciousness, and to lull us with a brother's tenderness into our sleep in Him.

For once more we are sinners, and to complete the assurance of our faith, He who is our dearest, kindest, strongest friend in the world is also our born Saviour. He has saved us from the guilt of sin, and from the power of sin, and from the punishment of

sin. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with his stripes we are healed." And so if Satan comes (as he often does come) at our last hour to accuse us bitterly in the court of our own conscience, to cast doubts on our pardon, to wound us with bitter recollections of past shortcomings, and to lash us into the sin of despair, at such moments let the tempted soul instantly cast itself on Jesus to hide in Him, to cling to Him; let it bid the tempter go to Him, our surety and representative, who long ago made himself responsible for us, when we made our great exchange, of laying on Him our debts, and taking from Him his righteousness. The one name we utter shall be Jesus, the one answer that we make shall be Jesus, the one plea we urge shall be Jesus. We know that we have no suffering of our own to offer as an atonement; but this we also know that-Christ has died.

We are

quite aware that we have no righteousness of our own to prefer, as our claim for heaven; but if any one asks how we expect to get thero, we take the question to Him who has called himself "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," and the answer comes back in a

flood of peace, which "none but his loved ones know." Nay, if for a moment we are in darkness, and have no light if we know not how to deny the suggestion that our iniquities have separated between us and our God; and that the barrier between us is of our own making-well, we are saved, not by joy, but by faith. If we must perish, we will perish clasping the cross, and clinging to the Saviour, quite sure that He will not suffer the very least of his elect through any pains of death to fall from Him.

In some

As a matter of experience there is no rule to measure this fear of death, and no principle to determine it; often there is none of it, where it might be most looked for, sometimes it is very terrible where we should have thought it could not come. cases the cause is entirely physical, either seated in the constitution, or closely connected with disease; and not unfrequently those who in the distance have most dreaded it, and on the brightness of whose life it has ever projected a cold and dark shadow, when the time has come, much to their own surprise, have found it but falling asleep. It does, however, sometimes happen that even with tried Christians a thick mist envelopes the soul in its declining hours, and though the setting sun before it dips under the horizon bursts out into gold and flame, it has been a sore struggle, and for long it seemed in vain to pray. Now there are at least two purposes which we may reverently suppose God desires to accomplish by a trial of this kind. One is the conversion or edification of those who stand by; the other is the final perfecting of those who suffer. It is a story often told of an eminent servant of God, who had during his life-time frequently prayed that his happy death might be blessed to an ungodly son, that when his time came, fear and sadness overwhelmed him; not so much the thought of Christ's salvation possessed him, as the fact of his own sinfulness; the joy of heaven faded before his utter unworthiness of admission there. Yet God, who was wiser than he, auswered his prayer in a way that he knew not. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The careless son, who might not have been affected by his father's happiness, was deeply moved by his father's fear, "If a man like him, after a useful and religious life, fears to die, what is death likely to be to me? Surely except I repent I shall perish." Now, for such an end, who would not welcome such a sorrow? There is yet another reason why it may seem good to God in the last hours of our life to hide his face for a little moment. We may have been leaning too much on outward helps, or on past experience, or on systems of doctrine, and we have not come quite close to God himself to cleave with all our strength to Him. Therefore He must teach us, and through us others, that orthodox opinions cannot give us peace; that sermons, and sacraments, and ordinauces, cannot give us peace; that pious parents, faithful pastors, exemplary friends cannot give us peace; that belonging to this sect, or pronouncing this shibboleth, or confessing this creed, or observing this ritual, cannot give us peace; that the esteem and commendation of our neighbours cannot give us peace ;-in a word, that all

covering of our own must be torn into shreds that all unsound hopes must be utterly disappointed that every shelter but the shelter of the Saviour's cross must be swept away before the winds of heaven, that every other name as a way of salvation must be as sounding brass, or tinkling cymbal, save Jesus, Son of God. Sooner or later all this must come to us; it is better if it comes before, but better then than never; and dark as the declining hour may be, severe as the The actual crisis may be, it comes to an end at last. fight is won, the cross is clasped, the light comes, the joy comes, for the Saviour comes; and He who only waited to be more gracious, who hid himself only to shine out more glorious at last, who denied, that in the end He might be more bountiful, who seemed to frown, only because He purposed to smile, comes and whispers, "Thy sins be forgiven thee, go in peace; and the rough water is passed, the ship glides into harbour, "and the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land."

Does the thought cross any one, who reads this paper, "How shall I myself die?" Well, it is something worth thinking about. Of course we all wish to die happily. There are many Balaams, if there are few Pauls. Yet it is something worse than folly to forget that death hangs on life, to make death the crisis and life the trifle; whereas death merely pronounces the verdict, life settles it it is solemn to die, only because it is awful to live. What we all of us need to learn more is how to walk with God hour by hour as a man with his friend; not so much to be continually going in and out of his presence as to be always living in it, without effort thinking of Him, without insincerity consulting Him, without hesitation obeying Him, without embarrassment speaking of Him. Instead of endeavouring, in the happy simplicity of an almost unconscious religion, to set Christ before us in all we do, to have Him with us wherever we go, to make joy safe by asking Him to share it, to rob care of its carefulness by casting it as it comes all on Him, we are too apt to separate prayer from life, heaven from earth, holiness from happiness, as if human affections lowered divine aspirations, as if we could be more like God by being less like men. Thus when we go to meet Him we have formally to prepare ourselves for solemn audience. It is almost as if we had to unclothe ourselves of the earthly and to clothe ourselves with the heavenly. Reverence! how can we be reverent enough; but surely He prefers the simple trustfulness of kinsfolk to the distant homage of strangers; and if we made it more our endeavour to bring every thought, every word, every habit, every employment, every recreation, every commonest act of life into captivity to Christ, and so into harmony and fellowship with Him, it would not violently interrupt us, as it often does, to lay down the task of the moment, to hold intercourse with Him. non

There are three chief conditions of abiding in Christ's presence obedience, meditation, and love. We must obey Him. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." How is it possible, I will not say to desire, but even to endure the thought of Christ's company, if we are wilfully wandering from

II.-51.

Him, or resisting Him, loving what He hates, or doing what He forbids? It is a question how many there are of his own true people who if told, as one of old was told, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee," would rise to go to Him with a glow of happy surprise. Then there must be more of secret, and continuous, and real thinking of Him, If prayer is the worship of the heart, meditation is that of the mind. Pascal has said, "Thought makes the greatness of men. Why is there so little meditation among Christians-such a lack of that quietness, and stillness, and thoughtfulness of soul and spirit, in which alone the dews fall on us, and the life of Christ grows. There is much activity of hands and feet, much listening, far too much talking. Yet, where the heart is, there the treasure is; and it is in human nature to think of what we love. Once more

we shall seek Christ, we shall be with Him, we shall think of Him just in proportion as we love Him. We never find it irksome or dull to be with those we love; we have always something to speak of to them. O, to love Christ better! One true throb of love to Him is worth more in his sight than the thrones of a hundred kings. If we really loved Christ, and trusted Him, we should seek his presence to make life happy as well as death easy; and then, when the summons does come, when the most unutterable, the most momentous of all convictions seizes us-that at length our own life is over, it will be but like going out of one room into another, we shall indeed be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, when his love has been the reality of our life.

"It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the Judgment." Mr. Alexander Smith, in one of his "Essays in Dreamthorp," has strikingly observed that death gives a kind of dignity to the very meanest and shabbiest of human beings. When we are dead, our enemies cease to envy us, our friends love us better than ever, some admire, all pity. But why will not we go a little further, and, not content with imagining our friends and neighbours in the sublime repose of death, also think of them in the vast spirit land, and standing under the great White Throue? It is in the power of every one of us to make some one fitter to go before the judgment-seat of Christ. "Christianity would sacrifice its divinity if it abandoned its missionary character. When the power of reclaiming tho lost dies out of the Church, it ceases to be the Church. Where the power remains, there, whatever is wanting, it may still be said that the tabernacle of God is with men." Yet is there anything so evident or so inexplicable as the paralysis that affects so great a multitude of professing Christians in their intercourse with those who plainly know not God? Is it that we do not believe that souls can be lost, or is it that we do not care? Either there is a hell, or there is not. there is not, then how do we know that there is a heaven? If there is, and if Jesus died to deliver us from it, and if there is one human being on this earth whom we can influence, praying where we cannot speak, where we can speak praying too, let us do whatever we may with all possible kindness, and wisdom, and humility, and earnestness, to bid men

If