Over the earth and through the skies,
In never-wearied search of Paradise-
Region that crowns her beauty with the name
She bears for us-for us how blest,
How happy at all seasons, could like aim
Uphold our spirits urged to kindred flight

On wings that fear no glance of God's pure sight,
No tempest from His breath, their promised rest
Seeking with indefatigable quest

Above a world that deems itself most wise

When most enslaved by gross realities !"

An appalling pestilence raged in Carthage, and so gave deadly emphasis to the exhortations of St. Cyprian, when he, a good shepherd, sought to lead the sheep of his flock to green pastures and still waters of comfort; reminding them, as he stood between the living and the dead, while as yet the plague was stayed not, that they had renounced the world, and were abiding here as strangers and pilgrims only. "Let us," he besought them, "embrace that time which gives to each one his home, which, delivering us from this world, and loosing us from worldly snares, restores us to paradise and the kingdom." Who, he asks, that is placed in a foreign land, would not hasten to return to his own country? Who that saileth towards his own, would not eagerly desire a prosperous wind to bring him swiftly to the embrace of those he loves? "Our country we believe to be paradise: the patriarchs we esteem our parents. Why, then, do we not speed and run, that we may behold our country and salute our parents?"

Salutary though the sentiment be, however, it admits of onesided exaggeration. There are good people who, for instance, exalt and expatiate upon the death of godly infants, as though to quit this earth of ours at the very earliest date were the most blessed of privileges. The idea of man being sent into the world for any definite purpose never seems, it has been justly said, to enter the minds of these good people. "With them life is but an irksome omnibus-journey-the shorter the better-and to be got over by each without any regard to the comfort or requirements of his fellow-travellers." Only in part

are these strictures on the shorter the better" applicable, if at all, to the theme and expression of Mrs. Browning's sonnet :

"I think we are too ready with complaint

In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope

Of yon grey blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint

Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop

For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
O pusillanimous heart! be comforted,

And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road,
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints?—At least it may be said,

'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God !'"

Addison devotes a paragraph in one of his Spectators to the fact of men being in Scripture called strangers and sojourners upon earth, and life a pilgrimage. And he refers to several heathen as well as Christian authors, who under the same kind of metaphor have represented the world as an inn, which was only designed to furnish us with accommodation in this our passage. It is therefore very absurd, urges our moral essayist, to think of setting up our rest before we come to our journey's end; and not rather to take care of the reception we shall there meet with, than to fix our thoughts on the little conveniences and advantages which we enjoy one above another in the way to it.

"The Illusiveness of Life" is the title of a sermon on the patriarchs as sojourners in a strange country, by the late F. W. Robertson, of Brighton; who with characteristic force and insight explains the deception of life's promise, and the meaning of that deception. He shows how our natural anticipations deceive us-every human life being a fresh one, bright with hopes that will never be realized. With our affections, he goes on to say, it is still worse, because they promise more. "Men's affections are but the tabernacles of Canaan-the tents of a night--not permanent habitations, even for this life."

Where, he asks, are the charms of character, the perfection and the purity and the truthfulness which seemed so resplendent in our friend? They were only the shape of our own conceptions -our creative shaping intellect projected its own fantasies on him; and hence we outgrow our early friendships-outgrow the intensity of all: we dwell in tents; we never find a home, even in the land of promise, any more than Abraham did. “Life is an unenjoyable Canaan, with nothing real or substantial in it." But there is another beside the sentimental way, trite enough, of considering this aspect of life—as a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm, and that other is the way of faith. “The ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist could feel the brokenness of life's promises: they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no continuing city; but they did not mournfully moralize on this; they said it cheerfully, and rejoiced that it was so." Strangers -the very term implies a distant home. Pilgrims-the law of whose pilgrimage is to make progress. Forgetting the things behind; rating at their true worth the things around; earnestly pressing forward to the things before. Keble's devout lyric on the escape to Zoar is pitched in this key:

"Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look

When hearts are of each other sure;

Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
The haunt of all affections pure;

Yet in the world even these abide, and we

Above the world our calling boast :

Once gain the mountain-top, and thou art free:

Till then, who rest, presume; who turn to look, are lost."

THE FALSITY OF THE FAMILIAR FRIEND.

TH

PSALM xli. 9.

HE psalmist's enemies were speaking evil of him: when should he die, and his name perish? All that hated him were whispering together against him, and devising hurt.

But this he could bear, on the part of declared foes. What he could not bear was that his own familiar friend, in whom he trusted, and who ate of his bread, should have lifted up his heel against him.

Hengstenberg remarks that in Judas the expression, "Which did eat of my bread," receives its full, its frightful verification, in the fact of his participating in the Last Supper-to say nothing of habitually sharing in previous and everyday meals.

Even a comparatively slight wound may be severe when dealt by a friend. Dr. Colani thinks that never could the Son of man have felt so acutely the pain caused by opposition and non-recognition as when He received the message from John the Baptist, inquiring into the credentials of His Divine mission. That the rulers of the people, that one of the twelve, that those of His own kin, should doubt or dispute His mission, was hard enough to bear, but perhaps easy to foresee. But when he who had baptized Him, who had, so to speak, revealed Him to Himself,-when His "spiritual father" took his stand among the doubters, "Jesus must have felt a heartrending surprise, a veritable consternation: for the Baptist was not a reed shaken with the wind, and yet, if the Divine hand rested on that support, what but a reed was it, to pierce, even while it gave way?

The Et tu, Brute! of dying Cæsar is a large utterance, hardly more deep in reproachful pathos than wide of application. The bitterness of its import, varying in intensity, has sufficed to choke bad men and good and indifferent,-as a pang more sharp than all. What stung Jugurtha to the heart was the treachery of his confidential agent, Bomilcar, who intrigued to betray him to the Romans. What Cicero professes to have felt most keenly, during the Clodian troubles, was the perfidious conduct to him of that Serranus to whom, when consul, he had been so kind; nor was it the least bitter drop in the cup he had to drain at the last, that the leader of the band who took his life was one whose life Cicero had once saved, as counsel for the defence. Antony in the tragedy is naturally made to brood most resentfully on the being betrayed

by one on whose bosom he had "slept secure of injured faith." He can forgive a foe, but not a friend :

"Treason is there in its most horrid shape,

Where trust is greatest."

Herod the Great felt the pang when that dark and horrible secret, as Milman calls it, came to light, that Antipater, the beloved son, for whom he had imbrued his hands in the blood of his own children-Antipater, the heir of his kingdom-was "clearly proved to have conspired with Pheroras (B.C. 5) to poison his old and doting father, and thus to secure and accelerate his own succession." Michelet's narrative of the decline and death of the Emperor Frederick II. comprises this record: "Finally his chancellor, his dearest friend, Peter de Vineâ, attempted to poison him. After this last blow it only remained for him to veil his face, like Cæsar on the ides of March." And familiar to us all is the story of our Henry II., sick and bedridden, inquiring the names of the supporters of his rebellious son Richard. He was for declaring John, the youngest of his sons, and as he thought the most attached to him, heir to all his continental dominions. But on hearing the name of his beloved John, highest on the list of Richard's adherents, Henry was seized with a sort of convulsive agitation, sat up in bed, and gazing around with searching and haggard look, exclaimed, "Can it be true that John, my heart, the son of my choice, on whom I doted more than on all the rest, and my love for whom has brought on me all my woes, has fallen from me?" Assured that so it was, "Well then," sighed Henry, falling back on his bed, and turning his face to the wall, "henceforward let all go on as it may; I no longer care for myself nor for the world." And in this connection may be mentioned the dying exclamation of Henry's murdered chancellor. "What is this, Reginald?" cried Becket to Fitzurse, when the latter made up to him, bared sword in hand: "I have loaded you with favours, and you come to me armed, and in the church?" The last stroke that broke down the aged Pope Boniface VIII., bowed with the weight of eighty-six years, was