home, he placed them in Eden; and there the tempter found them, and ruined our race. The Redeemer in his agony and betrayal was in a garden; and when the rich man had begged his insulted body, he laid him in a new sepulchre in a garden. There the flowers first drooped under the blightings of sin, there Christ sought the face of his Father in his keenest agony, and there they laid him in his death, among the beautiful creations of the garden.

Judas knew where to find him; for that garden was his place of prayer. He had no home, and so he gathered his family around an altar sheltered only by the trees, and the heavens above the trees. The traitor knew, too, at what hour to find him;-amid the shades of the evening, after the toils of the day were over. We know that the place must have been very retired, or the officers of justice, ever keen to find the criminal, would not have needed a guide. The night must have been very dark, or torches and lanterns would not have been necessary. They must have had fears of "the common people," who heard him gladly," or they would not have gone for him in the night. They must have feared a rescue, or they would not have taken swords and spears, staves and clubs.

How calmly he awaited their coming, when he might have slipped away at the first glimmer of their lights, and the first sound of their footsteps! A few moments ago he was wrestling with principalities and power, exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; his soul in agony, and blood oozing from his body; and with strong cries and tears, making supplication to God, that if it were possible, the cup might pass from him! And yet, now when they come, how he meets them! "Whom seek ye?" "Jesus of Nazareth!" "I am he!" "And immediately they went backward, and fell on the ground." And with another look, he might, undoubtedly, have sent them to the world of spirits. He has them in the grasp of his almighty power; but he only stipulates that his disciples shall go unmolested!

They think they will do it all in the darkness of the night, and the story shall never be known! Vain expectation!

The whole scene is so minutely drawn that you can paint it all, and feel sure that nothing is left out.

It is stamped on the living page, and shall stand there for ever. Thus shall His words be fulfilled, "There is nothing hid which shall not be known."

With mockish niceties of speech, or own
My birth in rude, seditious Galilee?
Hear now: God smite me with his bolt of wrath,
If e'er the accused before the Sanhedrim,
Or any of his scattered followers,

Have met my sight for once before this hour.

THE REPENTANCE.

OH, that prophetic sound! the signal clear Of coming day-of darkness to my soul! Oh! look not on me thus, my injured Lord.

I sink, I die, beneath thy speechless gaze.
Thine eye, though lit with love ineffable,
Has more of terror for my perjured soul,
Than all the bolts of wrath which I've invoked,
In reckless imprecation, on my head.
Oh! spare me yet that look; or can it speak
Forgiveness still? Alas! my guilty heart
Should bleed, as now thy smitten temples bleed.
Oh, darkness, cover me! Deep, dreadful night,
Spread over me thy guilt-protecting pall,
Where I may weep in bitterness of soul!

LXXIX.

CHRIST ON THE CROSS, AND HIS MOTHER.

MARY. "I know it all, all that ye would say. I know that it is a disgrace to have a child hang on the gibbet. The vilest only are crucified. I know ye would speak to me of chagrin and shame that has come upon the royal line of David! I know ye would save me the anguish of seeing the unspeakable agony of my son. But I cannot, I cannot stay away!"

MARY MAGDALENE." Didst thou ever witness a crucifixion?"

MARY." No. But they tell me no language can paint its horrors. But my child is to be crucified,

and I must be near him, even if it cost me all its agonies."

MARY CLEOPAS.-" But the soldiers will drive thee away."

MARY.-"Not when they know that I am his mother. They will pity my distress. But though the centurion should urge his horse over me, and bid his soldiers thrust me with their spears, I must be there."

MARY MAGDALENE.-"But canst thou do him any good?"

MARY. Perhaps not. They tell me that the very priests will leave the temple to mock him; that the multitude will scoff him; that the soldiers will be as cruel as possible, and that not a soul will pity him! But they are mistaken. There

will be one near him whose eyes shall weep, and whose heart will feel every blow that drives the cruel iron through his limbs! Oh, my child! my child! Meek and lowly one! Is this the sword that the aged Simeon said should be thrust through my soul? Some call thee an impostor, and revile thee! Thy disciples are discouraged, and have fled away; and thy friends who cast their garments in the way, crying Hosanna to the Son of David,' are all gone now. Oh! shall his mother leave him in this hour of suffering? He never disobeyed me; he never cost me one pang of sorrow by his misconduct. Save when he has been ill-treated by others, and I have grieved over his weary labours and self-sacrifice, he has been my constant and increasing comfort. How has my pride been crushed since the time I hoped to see him on the throne of his father David! But I cannot desert him! Though I die, I will stand near the cross! It may be I shall catch his

eye for a single moment, and he will know that one heart beats for him. It may be I shall receive one look of recognition from my own dear Son! I must go-it is time; for they have reached the spot."

MARY CLEOPAS.-"We will go with thee; we will share the dangers with thee, and let none but thee stand nearer the cross than we do. We will watch him through his agonies, and pray for him while he breathes. But, oh! do not expect too much, even of his love! Do not feel disappointed, if, amid the agonies of the cross, he has no word, no look, even for you. He must be more than created if he has."

MARY." The more I ponder his character, the less I understand it! But this I know, no mother ever had such a son, no mother ever lost such a son, and no mother ever suffered the pangs I now endure. Oh, that I could comfort him! Jehovah! have compassion upon him! Let us go!"

THE ANGEL PROCLAIMING THE RESURRECTION. BY ROBERT DAVIDSON, D. D.

EPINICION, OR TRIUMPHAL HYMN ON THE RESURRECTION.1

I.

YE bronzéd veterans of a hundred wars,
Covered with honourable scars!
What means the pulse's altered beat,
The stony stare, the quick retreat
Of blood that never froze before,
On Caspian or on Rhenic shore?

"Epinicion, or Triumphal Hymn," was the name given to the Angels' Song, "Holy, holy, holy! Lord God of Hosts," when sung in the ancient communion service. It was followed by the Allelujah, which in some churches was never sung but once a year; that is, at Easter, in honour of the resurrection of our Lord. So in the Liturgy ascribed to St. James, it is called "the triumphal song of the magnificence of thy glory."-Bingham's Chr. Antiq., vol. v. pp. 32, 246.

Is it the morning-star's sweet glance,
Reflected back on helm and lance?
Is it the ray of rising sun,
Shimmering on shield and habergeon?
Is it the lightning, sharp and red,
That fills a warrior's heart with dread?
More awful, far,

Than rising sun or morning-star,
Or sudden flash of blinding levin,
That portent from the bursting heaven!
To match a foe of mortal mould,

Trenchant blade, and linkéd mail,
And sinewy arm may earth avail,
But where the champion bold,

His steel against Unearthly Might to aim, That comes with earthquake tread, and eyes of flame?

II.

Ye haughty demons! but of late
Insolent with glutted hate,

What disconcerts you now,

And gathers tenfold blackness on your brow?

Ye deemed a signal triumph was achieved, When the first mother ye deceived,

And planted in Earth's breast the thorn; Ye deemed redemption nippéd in the bud, When treason sold the sacred blood,

And crucified the Woman-Born.

Behold the Hostage free!

As when refreshed with sleep a giant wakes,

Like willow withes his bonds he breaks;

Ended is his and our captivity.

His foot is on the usurper's neck;

The Infernal gates with terror quake;

And fastened to his girdle are the keys,

please.

Back to your dens, ye disappointed fiends, And howl your empty curses to the winds!

III.

Ye angels! in whose looks do meet
Awe, wonder, joy, in union strange and sweet;
Again, again,

Lift up the jocund chant,
With chorus jubilant,

That sounded erst on Ephrath's midnight plain!

"From spheres of highest worth,
From humblest depths of earth,
Glory to God!

God's foe and man's bound to his chariot-wheels.
Celestial cohorts, close your seried files,
And through long streets of stars, with shout and
trump,'

And banners spread, conduct the solemn pomp;
While rapture every sinless bosom thrills.
On golden hinge expand the pearly gate,
The poor Estray,

That once shot madly from its sphere away, Mid heaven's high sanctities to reinstate!

"God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet!"-Psalm xlvii. 5. This verse may be recommended to Professor Longfellow, and all other lovers of the hexameter, as a beautiful and faultless specimen of that measure.

IV.

Ye veiled women! starting at each sound,
Bending your tearful eyes upon the ground,
What mean those early feet, those spices rare?
Come ye to cull the choicest flowers,
In morning's fresh and dewy hours,

A fragrant chaplet to prepare?

All unheeded, all unseen,

Fountain, flower, and myrtle hedge, Alley trim, and boscage green;

Graver cares your thoughts engage,
Wondering much who shall unlock
The secrets of the caverned rock.
The stone is rolled away! and from your hearts
A load as heavy as that stone departs;
For with that stone is rolled away the curse,
That cast a shadow o'er the universe.

Mercy's message now proclaim
In the ear of Guilt and Shame;
Crushed and bleeding hearts bind up,
Tenting them with balmy hope.
Bid the saint no longer dread
What Christ's touch hath hallowéd;
Radiance from the Angel's face
Lingers still around the place.
Not in dust the members groan,
When the Head is on a throne;
Christ hath risen! our brother, He!
Where our Kindred reigns, reign we.1

Which on their ravished ears poured thrilling, like
The silver sound of many trumpets heard

Afar in sweetest jubilee: then, swift
Stretching his dreadful sceptre to the left,
That shot forth horrid lightnings, in a voice
Clothed but in half its terrors, yet to them

Seemed like the crush of Heaven, pronounced the doom.
The sentence uttered, as with life instinct,
The throne uprose majestically slow;

Each angel spread his wings; in one dread swell
Of triumph mingling as they mounted, trumpets,
And harps, and golden lyres, and timbrels sweet,
And many a strange and deep-toned instrument
Of heavenly minstrelsy unknown on earth,
And angels' voices, and the loud acclaim
Of all the ransomed, like a thunder-shout,
Far through the skies melodious echoes rolled,
And faint hosannas distant climes returned.
Down from the lessening multitude came faint
And fainter still the trumpet's dying peal,
All else in distance lost, when, to receive
Their new inhabitants, the heavens unfolded.
Up gazing, then, with streaming eyes, a glimpse
The wicked caught of Paradise, where streaks
Of splendour, golden gleamings, radiance shone,
Like the deep glories of declining day,
When, washed by evening showers, the huge-orbed sun
Breaks instantaneous o'er the illumined world.
Seen far within, fair forms moved graceful by,
Slow turning to the light their snowy wings.
A deep-drawn, agonizing groan escaped
The hapless outcasts, when upon the Lord
The glowing portals closed. Undone, they stood
Wistfully gazing on the cold gray heaven,
As if to catch, alas! a hope not there.
But shades began to gather, night approached,
Murky and lowering; round with horror rolled
On one another their despairing eyes,

That glared with anguish; starless, hopeless gloom
Fell on their souls, never to know an end."

LXXXI.

THE FINAL JUDGMENT.

WE shall not attempt in human language to describe what the human mind cannot comprehend-the greatness, the grandeur, and the awfulness of the last great act in the drama of time. The only attempt that approaches it, is to be found in the inimitably beautiful words of Him who is to be Judge of the quick and the dead.

Such revelations of character, of the providences and the wisdom and the goodness of God as will then be made, would overwhelm the mind, even if we were to be mere spectators. The fact that Time has finished his course, that earth's history is completed, the multitudes called together so utterly beyond our conceptions of numbers, the innumerable spectators from other worlds, perhaps the wheeling up of all the great planets of our system, the gathering of Arcturus and his sons, and multitudes more of starry visiters, the unfoldings of the hidden character of all earth's inhabitants, the exulting joy of the righteous, and the unutterable agony of the wicked, and the greatness and glory of the Son of Man,-all these combine to put all attempts to describe, or even to conceive of it, utterly beyond our reach. We shall relieve the reader from any attempts of our own, by letting him hear the harp-strings of one of our own poets, as he sings the Judgment.

"From the hill the cloudy curtains rolled, And, in the lingering lustre of the eve, Again the Saviour and his seraphs shone.

Emitted sudden in his rising, flashed

Intenser light, as toward the right hand host
Mild turning, with a look ineffable,

The invitation he proclaimed in accents

"Ubi caro mea regnat, ibi me regnare credo."-Augustine, Med.

LIGHT AND SHADE.

BY EMILY Z. ASHFORD.

ON a dark cloud the sunlight streameth,
A rainbow shineth there:
Now the bright ray no longer beameth,
Flown is the vision fair.

Its hues were of the sky at even,
Over the sunset hill,
The hues have passed again to heaven,
But the cloud remaineth still.

So it is with a human sorrow,

Brightened by pleasure's ray: The spell we from its light would borrow Fades with that light away.

Vainly we dance to music's measure,

Vainly the wine-cup fill,— When gone the transient gleam of pleasure, The cloud remaineth still.

The sky hath wept for the drooping flowers,
Down on the earth below;

It hath bathed their leaves with gentle showers:
Where are its dark clouds now?
Glad are the flowers, once parched and dying,
Cheered by the summer rain;
For each bright drop on their petals lying,
The rainbow shines again.

So it may be with human sorrow,
When we lament the past,

When Memory's shadow dims the morrow,
And her voice sighs on the blast;
Cheer but the anguish of another,

Gladden his toilsome way;
Weep for the wrung heart of a brother,
And the cloud may pass away.