consistently with the high ends of thy ministry, and consistently with our own real interest, thou wouldest have been here. We see that thou lovest and carest for us; and though thou didst not at once grant our request precisely as we desired, yet not the less on that account do we take thy visit kindly. Thou art still our best friend, our gracious Lord. "We know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." thy feet we will still lie down. That thou hast come at all, at our solicitation, is great condescension; that thou hast come in such an hour of trouble, is a peculiarly seasonable act of friendship.'

At

Happy will it be for you who mourn, if in like circumstances you are enabled to feel as these sisters felt, and to meet your Saviour's gracious advances as they did. In the hour of blighted prospects and disappointed hopes, when the evil which you deprecated has befallen you, you may think that consolation comes too late. Like Rachel, you may weep, and refuse to be comforted; like Jonah, when your gourd withers, you may almost be tempted to say that you do well to be angry. You may turn away when your Saviour draws near; you may sit disconsolate when he calls. 'If he had come for the purpose of averting the calamity,-if he had been here sooner, and had interposed his power to help,-it had been well, for then my brother had not died. But the calamity has overtaken me,-my brother is dead; and what avails it that He is here now?'

Beware of all such impatience, such natural irritability of grief. Reject not the Saviour's visit of sympathy

now, because he did not come to you exactly as you in your ignorance would have had him to come, and did not do for you exactly what you would have had him to do. It is enough that he is with you now, to speak comfortably to you, to bind up your broken heart, to fill the aching void in your affections, and be to you instead of all that you have lost. True, if he had been here before, your brother might not have died, brother, alas! is dead. But he is here now, better than a thousand brothers, he who words of eternal life, he who can speak a word in season to the weary soul, and who, when flesh and heart faint, will be the strength of your heart and your portion for ever.

and your

he who is

hath the

Such might be the feelings common to the two sisters, -such are the feelings of nature mingled with grace common to all sanctified grief,-as indicated in the affecting address, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."

XIII.

MARTHA AND MARY.

PART SECOND.- Their different kinds of Grief, and the Lord's different ways of dealing with them.

"Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. . . . . Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died."-JOHN xi. 20, 21, 32.

THE simple and pathetic exclamation that bursts from the lips of the two bereaved sisters, as they separately meet with Jesus, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," cannot but find an echo in every breast that has ever mourned over a loss like theirs. The feeling which it expresses is so natural, that we may almost call it the very instinct of grief to reflect on what has happened, with a vague idea of its having been possible somehow to avert it. Nor is the expression of the feeling always sinful, if it be to God himself that we express it. He would have us, indeed, to open our minds and hearts, without reserve, to him; for it is better that our complaint should be poured into his ear, than that it should be pent up in our own bosoms; and the relief which the utterance of it affords may lead to calmer and holier thoughts. Thus, in the present instance, the mourners, amid their very upbraiding of Jesus, as some might count it, were warm and cordial in the welcome

which they gave him. They spoke the language common to all deep and recent grief when they bewailed the untoward accident but for which, as they imagined, the event might have been ordered otherwise. But at the same time they gave evidence of their being under the influence of genuine faith in Jesus, and tender love to him, when they hailed his visit so affectionately as they did, and accepted with meek resignation his seasonable fellowship and sympathy.

Thus far we trace in their conduct the working of a common grief.

But the sisters differed in their sorrow, as they did generally in the leading features of their characters, and their manner of thinking and acting in the ordinary affairs of life. They were persons They were persons of very different tempers and dispositions; and this difference is uniformly and strikingly brought out in their treatment of the Lord Jesus. Both looked up to him with reverence; both regarded him with full confidence and tender affection; and both were equally earnest and eager in testifying their esteem and love: but each in doing so followed the bent of her own peculiar turn of mind.

Martha was distinguished by a busy, if not bustling activity in the despatch of affairs. She seems to have possessed great quickness, alertness, and energy, together with a certain practical ability and good sense, qualifying her both for taking a lead herself and for giving an impulse to others. She was on this account well fitted for going through with any work to be done, and she was always awake to the common calls and the common

cares of the ordinary domestic routine of life. Mary, again, was evidently characterized by more depth of thought, more devotedness and sensibility of feeling. She was more easily engrossed in any affecting scene, or any spiritual subject; more alive at any time to one single profound impression, and apt to be abstracted from other concerns.

Hence, as we find it stated on a former occasion when our Lord was received in their house, while "Mary sat at his feet and heard his word," "Martha was cumbered with much serving." She was assiduous, and even officious, in her hospitable anxiety to provide for the accommodation of her guest; and if Jesus had come "to be ministered unto," he would have been best pleased with Martha's attention to all his wants. But as he came, "not to be ministered unto, but to minister," he found greater delight in her sister Mary, who, with the meekness of a disciple, and the earnestness of a spiritually awakened soul, listened to the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. Accordingly, when "Martha said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me,"

"Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke x. 40-42). Thus the sisters showed their respective characters as they waited upon the Divine Visitor whom it was their privilege to entertain in their house as a highly honoured guest and a much valued friend.