By a faithful trust in God our Father in heaven, a calm resting in His love, an earnest desire to live to His glory, and to bring others to Him, by fighting the good fight of faith and watching anxiously, prayerfully, day by day, for His second coming, we may each one, members of this our Mothers' Meeting,' even the humblest, the poorest among us, do much to 'hasten on the coming of the day of Christ,' to help to advance the glorious Kingdom, for which our blessed Lord desired us to offer our petitions, when He bid us pray, 'Thy kingdom come.'

THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH,

AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

JUR blessed Lord, from His very earliest childhood, learned obedience, and ful

filled the law, or the Will of God, by

lowly submission to all that was there commanded. He was, we are told, 'subject' to His parents, Joseph and Mary. His quiet home-life in that sweet village of Nazareth, was, we doubt not, my dear friends, a life of duty, cheerfully fulfilled to God and to man, in faith, and prayer, and love, spent in working with His earthly father as a carpenter, bearing gently and patiently the fatigue, the trials and difficulties, of an every-day life of toil. For though He was one with God, yet He was also a true man. He showed us all, indeed, that it was

Thy will be done in Earth, as it in Heaven. 53

to Him a joy to do His Father's will.* Yet Scripture tells us that He felt oftimes weary. By Jacob's well 'Jesus being wearied with His journey sat down.' And not only weary in the body, but also in spirit, for 'He came in the likeness of sinful flesh,' and 'the burden of our guilt was upon Him;' yes, your sins, my sins, were upon His heart as a heavy burden, with the sins of the whole world.

But the crown of Jesus' submission to His Father's will, was His suffering and death upon the Cross, a death of agony, of shame, of humiliation. For this He came into the world.

Then said I, Lo, I come, I delight to do Thy will, O my God.'t We are told, 'The Father loved Him, because He laid down His life for the sheep.' Jesus was a true Man, in every particular, 'yet without sin.' He could rejoice with those who rejoiced, and weep with those who wept. Did He not shed tears at the grave of Lazarus? How simple, yet how beautiful, are + Ps. xl. 7, 8.

* John, iv. 34.

those two short words, 'Jesus wept!' Did He not weep over Jerusalem when standing gazing at the city from the Mount of Olives?

On that same spot, my sisters, I have often stood, and wondered how the people of that favoured land could remain unmoved beneath the loving Saviour's touching lamentation over them, while He looked upon that beauteous view stretched out before Him. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not !'* So heavy was the weight of our sins upon the soul of the blessed Saviour, that ere His crucifixion, we are told by St. Matthew,' He began to be sorrowful and very heavy;' by St. Mark, 'that He began to be sore amazed;' by St. Luke, 'that He was in an agony.' A faint knowledge of His agony is thus granted to us. But the depths of His Luke, xiii. 34.

anguish were fully known only to His Father in heaven. We are told, too, that while His loving disciples were cast down and troubled, Jesus comforted their hearts with words of heavenly love and peace, such as He alone could speak to them. But though willing even to die for us sinners, the love of life, as a Man, was strong in our blessed Lord. Not that He feared the pain, the anguish the cruel nails, the thorns, the agonising death of the Cross, nor the scourging, the mocking of the people of the nation whom He had so loved, even unto the end; or the valley of the shadow of Death itself, from which He knew He should so soon come forth to life again. Oh, no, these death-sufferings were not the real cause of the Saviour's unutterable woe and bitter anguish! It was that the sinless Son of God was to take upon Him the iniquities of us all. Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree.' Hence came that prayer of agony, when Jesus went forward in the garden of