perhaps hardly conceive themselves so changed as that they should know it.

Yet the facts which should naturally excite this love are all known to them. They know what this week celebrates; there is no part of the story of our Lord's sufferings with which their ears are not familiar. They have heard. and read often even of his agony in the garden of Gethsemane, -even of his exclaiming on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Nor have any more particulars been known to good men of old than are now known to us. Go back as far as we will, approach as closely to the time of our Lord's appearing on earth as our existing records will allow, still we can trace no fuller knowledge of the facts of our Lord's sufferings and death than we can all gain-than we have actually gained from the four Gospels now in our possession. That story which we know so well, but feel so little, is precisely the same which constrained so many of God's servants in different ages, which constrains so many at this moment, to count all things but loss for Christ's sake, to govern their whole lives and thoughts by the principle of love and gratitude to their Saviour. The difference is assuredly not in our knowledge but in ourselves-that which has been the very bread of life to others is to us tasteless, weak, and ineffectual.

Yet, although it is true that we have the facts of our Lord's sufferings before us, as well as those of his life; and though we may, in one sense, be said to have the knowledge of them, yet we still labour under a strange ignorance respecting them; we have not, it is to be feared, brought them home to ourselves, and fully digested them. We still are apt to say in our hearts, "Who shall ascend into heaven, or who shall descend into the grave?" or, in other words, we connect the thought of our Lord only with heaven, which is far above out of our sight; or with death, which we strive to keep out of our minds so long as we can. We do not enough consider that the word is nigh us, in our mouths, and in our hearts; that it is now, whilst we are in this world, whilst we are talking and thinking and acting in our various ways, that Christ offers himself to us as our Saviour. We do not enough value nor understand the extent of his mercy in coming upon earth to live with us, as well as to die for us. We do not enough remember that he was, in all points, tempted like as we are. Nay, although the wisdom of God has hidden from us the particulars of our Lord's early life, to prevent, perhaps, many superstitions; yet that he was a child, that he was young, and knew the thoughts and feelings of boyhood no less than those of manhood, is a thing which we ought not to forget, nor omit to turn it to our benefit. Men forget what they were in their youth, or at best only partially remember it: it is hard, even for those whose memory is strongest and most lively, to put themselves exactly into the same position in which they stood as boys; they can scarcely fancy that there was once a time when they cared so much for pleasures and troubles which now seem so trifling. And it may be, that if we rise hereafter to angels' stature; if wisdom be ours such as now we dream not of; if being counted worthy to know God as he is, the poorness of all created pleasures shall be revealed to us, flashing upon our awakened spirits like light, it may be that we shall then feel it as hard to fancy how we could have cared for what we now deem most important; how twenty years, more or less, taken from this span of our earthly life; how being parted for a few years, more or less, from those friends with whom we are now united for ever; how this could have seemed of any importance to beings born

for immortality. It is quite reasonable to suppose that the interests of manhood will hereafter appear to us just as insignificant,-I ought rather to say, ten thousand times more so, than the interests of our boyish years can seem to us now. We forget, and to all minds short of God's, the past must something fade away ere the present can fully possess them. But with Him, who is the First and the Last, it is not so, to him all things are present, and nothing is despised. Surely there is something for the youngest child to think of with comfort, when he recollects how Jesus, far from turning children away from him, " took them up in his arms, and laid his hands upon them, and blessed them." Or was it for nothing that this was recorded, or are we merely to say, coldly, that this was a beautiful instance of Christ's meekness and humility, and so dismiss it from our thoughts as a fact of history? It was a proof of his meekness and humility, but it is so still; he changes not, but is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and the value of this proof of his love is not to show us what he did to the children of Judæa eighteen hundred years ago, but what he will do now to ours, whenever we bring them to him; it is the assurance to every child, so soon as he can think or understand who Christ is, that he may go boldly to beg for his Saviour's mercy; that Christ calls him to him, and is ready to take him into his care, and to bless him with an enduring blessing.

I believe, however, that while we admit this of young children, and while many a parent has felt the deepest pleasure in the thought of this promised love of Christ to his infants, or those only a few years removed from infancy; yet that there is an age with which we are not so apt to connect the thought of Christ's love; the age, namely, between childhood and manhood. With manhood we are, of course, in full sympathy, because it is the period to which we have ourselves arrived; and childhood, partly perhaps from the strongness of the contrast which it offers, we are apt to invest with a certain romantic and poetical interest, and are not unwilling to believe that the innocence of that yet untainted age may be thought, worthy of communion with heaven. But the years subsequent to childhood lose this interest of the imagination, without yet acquiring the deeper interest of our habitual sympathy; nor can it be concealed, that life, in these intermediate years, is far from wearing its most engaging aspect ;