dren, ministers and people, must part. We may travel together long and profitably and peacefully, but it cannot be uninterruptedly. A parting hour must arrive, when "one shall be taken and the other left." Both may go together to the water's edge, but you must enter those waters singly and alone-Jordan must be passed, and on its banks all that is earthly must be left behind.Would you so part that you may be reunited, that when that flood is crossed, you may meet again in the celestial city? It is now within your powerthe offer, the hope, the certainty are all within your reach. Instead of separating from those you love with the feeling of those Ephesian Christians, 66 we shall see his face no more," in all your separations, even the most painful and the last, if you are, indeed, the children of the same Saviour, the possessors of the same hope, anchored

within the veil, sure and stedfast, your feelings may rightly be, "Blessed be God, we shall see their face again." This is a sharp trial, but it is a short one. The river is stormy and its floods are deep, but it is neither wide nor impassable; and although our truly scriptural church has most affectingly taught us to say, "Suffer us not, through any pains of death, to fall from Thee," yet may we humbly hope that no child of God was ever lost in those dark waters, for has not your Lord himself declared, by the mouth of His prophet, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." He now offers Himself as your guardian and your guide; He who, when all other friends must leave you at the brink, will descend with you into the troubled waves, and still them with His voice, and bear you up in His arms amidst

the "swellings of Jordan," and never leave you or forsake you until He has carried you once again into the company of those you loved on earth, and from whom you shall be no more separated throughout eternity!

67

LECTURE IV.

ACTS xxi. 13.

I AM READY, NOT TO BE BOUND ONLY, BUT ALSO TO DIE AT JERUSALEM, FOR THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS.

ST. PAUL, after that affecting parting from his friends at Ephesus, which formed the conclusion of the last lecture, proceeded on his voyage to Jerusalem. We are informed in the third verse that he "landed at Tyre, for there the ship was to unlade her burden." It is scarcely possible to read that wellknown declaration of our Lord, "Woe unto thee, Chorazin, woe unto thee, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works had

been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes," without feeling from that moment a melancholy interest in the fate of the cities thus alluded to. We are tempted to think, if this be true, if Tyre and Sidon would have so highly valued the means of grace, why were they not bestowed? And although we know that the apostle's answer to all such enquiries would be, "Nay but, O man, who art thou, that repliest against God? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another to dishonor?" yet it is impossible not to read with pleasure the fact which the evangelist announces, when he tells us that in Tyre, yes, in that city in which but a few short years before, the name and the gospel of the Saviour were alike unknown, there were now true and sincere believers, whole families, as it