his service, like the angels in heaven. Christ will hear us. He will say, "Peace be unto you. Receive ye the Holy Ghost!" And this peace which we taste here is but the foretaste and earnest of that everlasting bliss which God hath prepared for the children of his adoption, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'

"I heard a voice from heaven, saying, Write, from henceforth, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours." May that rest be ours through Jesus Christ our Lord!

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SERMON XVI.

JOHN XX. 17.-" Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father! But go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

I SUPPOSE that most persons when, for the first time, they attentively read this passage, are sensible of considerable difficulty in understanding our Lord's meaning! His words are not altogether what we expect. There is even something that grates upon our feelings-something, as it would appear, of repulse and rebuke about them, which is hardly suitable to an act of spontaneous adoration and reverential love.

We find that Mary had come early in

the third morning after the burial, to the sepulchre wherein the body of the Lord lay! It would have been a consolation to that loving and courageous heart to gaze again upon the features of the dead Saviour! And more precious in the sight of Him who discerneth the spirits, would have been the tears with which she would have wetted the holy clay, than all the precious spices which she had brought to embalm it from corruption! The sepulchre had been fast sealed; naturally, then, it seemed secure against violence! So she marvelled and wept bitterly at finding the house of death empty, and despoiled of its treasure! "Mary," saith the evangelist, "stood without the sepulchre weeping, and as she wept she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre! And seeth two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head, the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto

her, Woman! why weepest thou? She

saith unto them, Because they have taken

away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." You see what was the thought uppermost in her heart! the loss of her Lord; the disappearance of that holy body, the temple in which the divine Spirit had so long tabernacled; and about which, and in which, to the eye of natural affection and awful reverence, power, and holiness, and beauty still lingered. Though dead, it was still the Lord's! Even the vision of angels, with their faces of glory and shining garments, does not dismay her. Nay, it does not even startle her at all! She is so absorbed in one thought and feeling. Though she answers their question therefore, the words come almost involuntarily from her lips. It is as if she spoke not to them, with their awful presence, but to herself; "They have taken

away my Lord." As if she had said,

"What wonder if I weep and am sad! Even the sight of such glorious beings as you are, fresh from God's presence, and with the light of heaven about you, is no

consolation for the loss of Him who was to me the way, and the truth, and the life! He was and is to me more than all men and angels together."

How natural! And surely we may gain much instruction from what immediately follows. For the simple narrative of facts, over and above its own interest, contains within it, as is common in scripture, a divine spirit! There is an inner meaning which faith and love discern and feed upon, rejecting the husk of the letter. What is the spiritual meaning then? Surely that no one thinks of Christ, or longs for his presence and the light of his countenance, without having Christ near him! Nay, though the soul may be overclouded, and, in the depths of its sadness, all support may seem withdrawn, till not a glimpse it may be, of the Saviour and Comforter is discernible, yet all the while He is close at hand. He is not only near at hand, but He will soon reveal himself to the afflicted. Nay, this very sorrowfulness which mourn

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