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THE EARLY MORNING.
And have you gone forth at day dawn,
And seen Easter sky grow bright?
Seen woods and vales clothed in shadow?
Seen uplands and hills bathed in light?
Beholding the dew-clad landscape,
While expectant thrilled the air,
Has your heart with joy exulted
To see earth wake everywhere?
The birds from hedgerow and forest
Were trilling the'r roundelay;
Oh! how they poured forth their gladness.
To see again the bright day!
In tree tops the nimble squirrels
Were racing about in glee;
Or one hoarsely barking descended
And stopped half way down the tree.
Across the path ran a rabbit;
It stopped at your whistle low,
And silent and still it wa'ted
To see what startled it so!
From resting place in the bramble
To mate in the clover tall,
Bob White was whistling crisp and clear!
Have you heard his morning call?
What mingled sounds from the barn-yards
Were burdening the morn'ng air;
Barking, and lowing, and bleating.
And the crow of Chanticleer!
Ah! have you thus seen the morning?
Have you heard the dawn's reveille?
Then through the whole day mind and heart
Brighter and better must be.
Addison.
THE TEARS OF JESUS.
PROFESSOR DAVID SMITH, D. D.
"Jesus wept."?St. John XI. 35.
This is the shortest verse in the Bible, at all
events in our hmgush Version, and it is one of
the most familiar and most aifeeting; but have
you ever notieed what a piobiem it pieseuts?
Why did J&>us weep? It is no wonder that
Martha and Mary and the friends who had come
to eoiniort them eoueerniug their brother, should
weep as tney stood beside nis grave; why shouldt
Jesus sliaie their sorrow and mingie his tears
with theirs 1 lie knew what he had come thither
to do. lie had eome to dry the tears of the
mourners and fill their hearts with gladness by
bringing their dear dead baek to life. \\ hy
then should he weep, knowing what would presently
come to pass ?
And, moreover, had he not been teaching his
disciples all those years of his sojourning with
them that theie was nothing in death which
should affright them? He had told them wonderful
and beautiful things such as the world
had never heard from the lips of its wise men,
though they had said much about death that was
brave and, in a manner, helpful. Far back a
sage of Greece had spoken a dark word often
repeated in succeeding generations?a word
which betrayed the sadness that lurked in the
heart of that bright land of laughter. "The best
lot by far," he said, "is never to have been born,
and the next best to die as soon as may be." He
meant that life is at the ben so sorrowful and
painful that death is a happy relca?e. To the
Epicurean poet life was sweet, but he counted it
folly to dread death, since death is extinction
. and there will be no suffering and no regret in
the grave. And it was one of the common places
of Stoicism in later days that death is a law of
Nature, a tribute which mortals must pay and
which should be paid cheerfully?a sentiment
which a piodern philosopher has echoed, assuring
us thaj; "death eannot be an evil, since it is
universal."
Such are some of the consolations of philos
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
headings
opliy, and it may be doubted if they have ever
dried a tear or cheered a single mourner in his
hour of desolation. Jesus has spoken after another
manner. lie has opened the veil and disclosed
the bright world toward which his people
are traveling. lie has revealed a new meaning
in life, and has told us that, for all who put their
trust in him, death is the perfecting of life and
the lifting of it to its highest potency. You recollect
two figures under which he spoke of it.
He called it a going home. "Let not your heart
he troubled. In my Father's House are many
mansions: I go to prepare a place for you. And
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and receive you unto myself, that where I
am, there ye may be also." And he called it a
falling asleep, and there is no terror here; for
sleep is sweet, and waking is glad.
WU.. il J! J T
>> iij meu aiu uesus weep at tlie grave of
Lazarus? Was it simply because his compassion
was so quick and tender that he was touched even
by unreasonable sorrow? You know how a
mother feels when her child awakts and sobs in
the darkness. She does not scold him and tell
him that there is nothing to be afraid of and he
is foolish to weep. No, she takes the little thing
in her arms and fondles him and soothes his
alarm, and there are tears in her own eyes, too.
And the heart of Jesus is kinder than a mother's.
"Can a woman forget her suckling child, that
she should not have compassion on the son of her
womb? Yrea, these may forget, yet will not I
forget thee." lie knows our weakness and
ignorance; he pities our childishness; he is
touched by our vain alarms, our unreasonable
sorrows, our imaginary distresses.
It may be so, but there is a deeper reason for
those tears of Jesus, and I shall try in what
remains to set it belore you. It is not my own
idea. I owe it to a Greek saint and scholar of
the fifth century, who is little known and whose
very name perhaps you have never heard. It
was Isidore. lie was born at Alexandria and
was a pupil, it is said, of the celebrated St.
Chrysostom. His was not the sort of life that
makes a stir in the world or bulks large in the
eyes of men. He was no ecclesiastical statesman,
no eloquent preacher, but a gentle and gracious
man of God who loved study and shrank from
noise and strife; and, after the fashion of his
age, ne nad leit the world and retired to a monastery
near Pelusium, a town at the eastern
mouth of the Delta of the River Nile. And there
he passed his sweet days in prayer and meditation.
In the providence of God he was entrusted
with an office of rich beneficence. He had not
only a furnished intellect but a sympathetic
nature. He knew the mind of God and understood
the human heart, and troubled souls turned
to him and told him their perplexities. His fame
as a spiritual counsellor spread abroad, and people
would write to him from far and near about
all manner of things?the conduct of their
affairs, the interpretation of difficult passages of
Holy Scripture, and the deep problems of life
and destiny. And he spent his days in answering
these.
A collection of his letters has survived, numbering
over two thousand and containing many
precious and bcauTiful things. One is from a
correspondent Theodosius the Presbyter, aud it
propounds this very question which we are considering;
why Jesus wept for Lazarus, knowing
that he would raise him from the dead. And
what is Isidore's reply? It was precisely on that
I U T H I March 27, 1912.
account, he says, that Jesus wept. Lazarus "was
righteous and had gloriously finished the race
of life, and has surely entered into rest and
honor. Him then he was about to raise from the
dead for his own glory; for him he wept, wellnigh
saying: 'One who has entered within the
llOQVOTl T om nollinrr Konlr frv f Ka 1 lrkttro -
Iivu f vu A UUA V/Uiilii^ UUVI\ L U tlXC KJ111U J Ullf ? liu
is already crowned I am bringing back to the
lists.' "
Is not this the explanation of the tears of
Jesus? lie knew what the eternal world is and
what glory lies behind the veil; and he did not
weep because Lazarus was done with life and its
gladness and sunshine; 110, but because his friend
had passed "to where, beyond these voices, there
is peace" and he must summon him back, must
fetch the wanderer who had got home out once
more into the weary wilderness. And his tears
say to us: "Oh, if you only knew the glory which
lies behind the veil and which I know so well
since I dwelt there from everlasting; if you only
knew that radiant world of rest and peace and
joy, you would never wish your dead back in this
dark world of toil and tumult and sorrow; you
would rejoice that they are at home with God."
This is the message which I have brought you
this evening; and I would have you observe that
our Lord asks us to make a double venture of
faith in view of the dark and solemn mystery
of Death and the Hereafter.
lie asks us, on the other hand, to trust in the
Providence of God. You, poor mother, sitting
here with your desolate heart and thinking of the
fresh grave out in the cemetery and the empty
crib at home, consider what might have been had
your cliild remained with you. There are worse
sorrows than death, and perhaps he has been
taken away from the evil to come. It is all so
dark to us, but God knows, and Jesus asks us to
trust God and believe in the wisdom and goodness
of his appointments.
And there is another venture of faith which
our Lord would have us make. He asks us to
accept his assurance that, if we be his, there
awaits us, in the undiscovered country whither
we are hastening, an undreamed of glory,
"things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
and which entered not into the heart of man?
whatsoever things God prepared for them that
love him." If we only caught a glimpse of the
wonder and felicity of the Unseen World, we
would be glad that ?ur dear ones have gone
thither, not simply for fear of what might have
befallen them here, but because they have won a
heritage unspeakably better than the best that
this world offers. We have the Master's word
for it; and it seems to me that modern Science,
after its own fashion, proclaims the same glad
tidings. For does it not tell us that the Universe
has a forward tendency and is continuallv strucr
gling through storms and stress from a lower
level to a higher, and that the present is always
the germ of a richer and more beautiful development
to be unfolded in the process of time?
There is nothing glad and fair in our life which
is not eternal. It is the darkness, the strife, and
the suffering that are temporal?the travailpangs
of the better order which is ever emerging,
the painful processes whereby the invincible purpose
of the Creator is being wrought out. And
the best that we have yet attained is only a feeble
germ and a dim prophecy of the final consummation.
Why should we sorrow for those who have won
their immortality and entered upon their golden
inheritance? Surely if the blessed dead might
commune with us, they would reprove our sor
row. ""Weep not for us," they would say: "we
are better here. Go on your way bravely and
gently until you too reach the goal, and you will
find us waiting to receive you and bid you welcome."
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