more than all the dwellings of Jacob." It is on "the mountains of Zion" the dew of His grace and blessing specially descends-"There I will meet with thee." "There He commandeth the blessing, even life for evermore." The name of every Temple-court, where there is a gathering of holy hearts, is "JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH-The Lord is there."

Who among us have not hallowed remembrances of these 'Hills of blessing'? Drawn thither, not for any poor conventional reason; but quitting, dusty and travel-stained, the hot and sultry highway for the bracing mountain air, to plead common wants, to bewail common infirmities, to obtain strength for daily duty and the endurance of daily trial. As we listen to the deeds of the Great ones of the olden time,' to realise what the sanctity of life is; to think of our departed; those who have dreamt their dream, and scaled their ladder, and who, dowered with immortality, are bending over those still left behind amid the desert stones and the wilderness path, to battle with windy storm and tempest. Above all, to ponder the mighty truths gathering around our own everlasting futures,—that great Eternity for whose shores, following the wake of others, we must sooner or later set sail;—" the land that is very far off," but which Psalm and Prayer and Litany bring to the eye of faith very

near !

Fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God! Members of a brotherhood extending to all countries, and embracing all time, bear witness! Is not this oftentimes your experience and testimony?" A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand;" "My soul longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is, to see Thy power and Thy glory so as I have seen Thee in the Sanctuary?" Yes, and if the Gate of Heaven be thus blissful and glorious, what will Heaven itself be? If these angel-haunts of earth be thus hallowed, what will be that Temple of which the earthly courts are the feeble emblem and reflection ?—the House not made with hands-the Sanctuary of holy hearts in a celestial world, where there is no recruiting of exhausted energy, no flaw or discord in the seraphic music!

May it be ours to attain these glorious heights of the symbolic ladder-when

"The gate of death

Opes its low valve to show the shining track
Up to an angel's heritage of bliss."*

"Even now I hear the footsteps,
And their voices far away;
If they call me, I am waiting,
Only waiting to obey!"

* Sigourney.

66

XV.

The Morning Consecration.

"Keep thy watch, it is daybreak;
Though all seems misty now.
Watch, for a star will guide thee
Afar on the mountain's brow."

-A. Shipton.

Morning, morning on the mountains, golden-vestured, snowybrowed!

Morning light of clear resplendence, shining forth without a cloud;
Light upon the darkest valley, light upon the sternest height;
Light upon the brake and bramble, everywhere that glorious light!
Strong and joyous stands the traveller, in the morning glory now,
Not a shade upon the brightness of the cool and peaceful brow;
Not a trace of weary faintness, not a touch of lingering pain,
Not a scar to wake the memory of the suffering hours again."
-Ministry of Song.

"Jacob did not place the stone which he had anointed to the intent that he might come and adore it. The stone was anointed, but not for an idol." -Augustine Sermons.

“And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it."—Gen. xxviii. 18.

THE MORNING CONSECRATION.

THE Patriarch had fully realised the solemnity of the occasion, and the holiness of the ground which he had made his couch of repose. He felt it was no mere phantasm of which he had been spectator. At all events the assurance grew with his waking thoughts, that his dream adumbrated divinest spiritual verities, of which too he was himself the privileged partaker.

He obeys the first and natural impulse of these moments of mingled joy and dread. God has spoken to him; and, as the recipient of wondrous and undeserved mercy, he now makes preparation to address his divine Succourer in return. He rises at dawn of day, when the fleecy clouds are still skirting the hill-tops and the earth around is "sown with orient pearl." The northern journey must erelong be resumed. Before, however, taking up his staff, he proceeds to erect a souvenir of this night of hallowed memories. Not only does he desire to set up a pillar of consecration; but, on the expectation of return from his distant pilgrimage, he would by

this means also identify the spot whose associations would ever be the most sacred of his life. With the stones so abundantly lying around he would have wished, perhaps, to rear a commemorative "heap" of larger dimensions and worthier of the occasion. Being, however, alone and without aid, he must defer any permanent memento. Meanwhile, all he can venture to accomplish is to take the boulder which he had used for his pillow, and place it, as best he could, in an upright position. This rude monolith will be the pledge of some more conspicuous and enduring erection in time to come. No chisel has he to carve any inscription, even had the stone admitted of this. As it was customary, however, for all travellers in the East, as it is to this day, to carry with them a flask of oil for mixing with their food, as well as for external use, he pours some of the contents of his "skin bottle" on the extemporised pillar. It is the first consecration of notable places of which we read in sacred story;-the setting apart of the rough rock of this upland from a common to a holy use. If the grateful dreamer can grave no lettering on its unhewn base, he can at least pronounce over it the name that has ever since sent its multiplying echoes through all ages—all lands—all believing hearts— BETHEL "the House of God." It was the JehovahShalom (Judges vi. 24), or the Ebenezer (1 Samuel

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