he lay there with the life-blood ebbing from his wounds, he had drawn out his Bible and it was found in his dead hands, and the rigid fingers were still pressed upon the words, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. For Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.'

'What a history a collection of Bibles would give us,' says the Archbishop of Armagh, if we could only have it! One would represent to us the sigh from a penitent, and one the song from a saint, and one would have its story of strength for some one who was tempted, and through one Christ's heart of fire melted the icicles round some heart of ice.'

CHAPTER XXI

SPECIAL CONSOLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE.

'That through patience, and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope.'-Rom. xv. 4.

'I see that the Bible fits into every fold and crevice of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe that this is God's book because it is man's book.'-HALLAM.

MARTYRDOM and the accumulations of overwhelming tragedy only befall the few; but many forms of sorrow—' bitter arrows from the gentle hands of God '-strike the lives of every one of us. Shakspeare, in his all-observing genius, has twice enumerated some of them. Thus in Hamlet' he

says,

There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

And in his famous sonnet he sings,

Tired of all these, for restful death I cry ;-
As to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone.

Let us then glance at some of the commonest forms of human sorrow, and note how in their extreme incidence men have learnt best how to bear them by calling to mind the promises of Holy Writ. Some of these manifold sorrows are occasional; some continuous. Some are exceptional, others universal: but for all alike—both for those which are overwhelming in their permanence and almost inconceivable in their intensity, and for those which, though less acute, benumb and paralyse our souls as with the touch of a torpedo-there is balm in the Gilead of Scripture and there is a physician there. To the anodynes which God there prescribes for us, there is no such thing as an incurable disease.

1. Take the universal, inevitable sorrow of bereavement. In that dark hour, what consolation can be distinctly compared to those which we derive from the words. of Scripture read in the light of Christ's Resurrection? We remember that our beloved ones have but entered a valley which, if it be dark, has yet been illuminated by Christ's footsteps; and over their graves we proclaim, in the thought of His victory, Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise! Awake, and sing ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall disclose her dead.' We remember that it is God who giveth His beloved sleep. 'I saw,' says George Fox, 'that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of Light and Love flowed over the ocean of Darkness: and in that I saw the infinite love of God.'

Aaron, when his two sons were stricken with deathEzekiel, when the delight of his eyes was taken from him at a stroke-bowed their heads and held their peace. When the boy of the Lady of Shunem lay dead in the upper chamber of her home, she was met by Gehazi with the questions, 'Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?' Ah! her heart was breaking, and her husband's heart was very sore, and the dear little lad, her only son, lay dead in the Prophet's chamber: yet she would not let her voice break with sobs as she answered, 'It is well!' Not a few parents, crushed in their deep sorrow by such a narrative as this, have carved upon the tombs of their dead sons the words, Is it well with the child? It is well!'

2. Again, there are few who escape all through life the wearing pain of severe sickness, and the depression which accompanies it. Do not Christian sufferers again and again find comfort in the verse, Thou shalt make all his bed in his sickness'? Can there be a malady more hopelessly loathsome than leprosy? There is one of the Sandwich Islands, called Molokai, which is consigned exclusively to lepers, and more than 800 lepers are living there. The sun rises on no more distressful and revolting scene of human abjectness and misery. And yet the young Belgian priest, Father Damien, voluntarily offered himself in 1873 to serve in that island, among its horde of hapless and hopeless lepers, with the practical certainty that he would himself succumb to that obliterating horror. There for thirteen years he continued to be the doctor, nurse, magistrate, teacher, carpenter, gardener, cook, sometimes even the grave-digger, of those awfully afflicted wrecks of humanity. At last he contracted the foul disease, and died of it. Hear his own touching words: I am now the only priest in Molokai. Impossible for me to go any more to

Honolulu, on account of the leprosy breaking out upon me. Having no doubt of the true character of my disease, I feel calm, resigned, and happier among my own people. Almighty God knows what is best for my own sanctification, and with that conviction I say daily, "Thy will be done." Please pray for your afflicted friend, and recommend me and my unhappy people to all servants of the Lord.'

3. Or take the common case of pecuniary anxiety and care for the means of sustenance. How many a father of a family, full of misgiving for his children, feels this care constantly flapping its wings about him in the pauses of the day and the silent watches of the night! How many a young man feels with a sense of anguish that he has no prospects;' that he cannot make his way; that he will never be able with honour or prudence to marry or make himself a home! I shall be chained,' he says, 'to dust and deskwork, a miserable drudge, for all the dreary tomorrows which shall be no better than the dreary yesterdays.' What remedy is there but faith in the promises of God? If he be honest, upright, temperate, strenuous, he will yet live to say, 'I have been young, and now am old, yet never saw I the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.' He learns to trust Him without whom not even the little brown sparrow falleth to the ground, and to cast all his care upon God, because God careth for him.

4. Again, how many suffer for long years from the gnawings of the viper's tooth of envy; how many, all their lives long, are the victims of hatred, malice, calumny, slander, and all uncharitableness. Yes, for there are multitudes of men through whom misunderstanding of everything passes like the mudcast of the earthworm.' Those are specially liable to suffer thus who always speak