scornful title written upon His cross; the village from which He did not disdain to draw His appellation when He spake in vision to the persecuting Saul. And along the narrow mountain path His feet must have often trod, for it is the only approach by which in returning northward from Jerusalem He could have reached the home of His infancy, youth, and manhood.-FARRAR. MARCH 18. I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. PHILIPPIANS iv. 11. Most true it is that whosoever would have this jewel of contentment which turns all into gold, yea, want into wealth, must come with minds divested of all ambitious and covetous thoughts, else are they never likely to attain it. It is not a senseless stupidity respecting what becomes of our outward estate. God would have us to take notice of all accidents which, from Him, happen to us in all worldly matters. Had the martyrs had the dead palsy before they went to the stake to be burnt, their sufferings had not been so glorious. It is a humble and willing submitting ourselves to God's pleasure in all conditions. Thus contentment makes men carry themselves gracefully in wealth, want, health, sickness, freedom, fetters, yea, whatever condition soever God allots them. It is no breach of contentment in men, by lawful means, to seek the bettering of their estate. A lazy hand is no argu ment of a contented mind; indeed, he that is idle "shall have poverty enough." God's Spirit is the best school-master to teach contentment; and the school of sanctified afflictions is the best place to learn contentment in.-FULLER. MARCH 19. Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. The world hardly attaches any significance to any life except those of its heroes and benefactors, its mighty intellects, or its splendid conquerors. But these are, and must ever be, the few. One raindrop of myriads falling on moor or desert or mountain, one snowflake out of myriads melting into the immeasurable sea, is, and must be, for most men the symbol of their ordinary lives. They die, and barely have they died when they are forgotten; a few years pass, and the creeping lichens eat away the letters of their names upon the churchyard stone. . . . Christ came to teach us that continued excitement, prominent action, distinguished service, brilliant success, are no essential elements of true and noble life, and that myriads of the beloved of God are to be found among the insignificant and the obscure. The calmest and most unknown lot is often the happiest, and we may safely infer that those years in the home and trade of the Carpenter of Nazareth were happy years in our Saviour's life.-FARrrar. But MARCH 20. And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it.-LUKE xix. 41. The Jerusalem of that day, as Jesus saw it under the burning flood of vernal sunshine, wrapped in its imperial mantle of proud towers,-the Jerusalem whose massive ramparts and lordly palaces made it a wonder of the world,-was a spectacle incomparably more magnificent than the decayed and crumbling city of to-day. And as Jesus gazed, a rush of divine sorrow and compassion welled up from His inmost heart. He had dropped silent tears at the grave of Lazarus; here, over fallen Jerusalem He wept aloud; for He was gazing with the eagle eye of prophecy on a scene far different from that which met His actual gaze. What He saw was, not a fair and holy city, sitting, like a lady of kingdoms, upon her virgin heights, but a city cowering, abject, degraded, desolate. To Him the beautiful city has become a harlot; her gold has become dross; her wine mixed with water; and now her hour had come. In the Jerusalem that was, He saw, down the dim vista of fifty years, the Jerusalem that was to be-the desecrated Jerusalem of the days of Titus. He saw those lordly towers shattered; those umbrageous trees hewn down; that golden sanctuary polluted. In the flush of the existing prosperity He foresaw the horrors of the coming retribution. The eye of His troubled imagination beheld the 600,000 corpses carried out of those city gates; the wretched fugitives crucified by myriads around those walls; the devouring flames doing their purging, seething, avenging work; and what had been Jerusalem, the holy, the noble, was but a heap of ghastly ruins, where the smouldering embers were half slaked in the rivers of a guilty nation's blood.-FARRAR. MARCH 21. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.-LUKE ii. 42. It must have been a wonderful sight to the child Jesus to visit the holy city at the season of the Passover. The multitudes who flocked to the feast from all sides were countless. Josephus reckoned the numbers attending a single Passover as 2,700,000, inclusive of the population of the city. Every house in the narrow limits of Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims, and the whole landscape round covered with the tents or booths of mat and wicker work and interwoven leaves, extemporized to serve as shelter-like the similar structures of the Eastern pilgrims still-for those who could not be accommodated in any house. The routes by which they travelled to the holy city must have been like those to Mecca, at certain seasons, even now; countless vessels laden with living freights of pilgrims; all the main lines of road thronged with huge caravans; every port of the Mediterranean, and every city and town on the highways leading to the great centre, thronged as with the passage of armies. The vast "dispersion,"-Jewish by birth, sentiment, or adoption-converged more and more densely on the one point, Jerusalem. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and in the costume of the far East, with their long trains of camels and mules, crowds from every province of Lesser Asia, Cappadocia, Pontus, etc., each band with the distinctive characteristics of their own district. Men from the slopes of Cretan Ida, and from the far-off cities and towns of sandy Arabia, met under the shadow of the temple; the whole world, in a sense, was gathered to this one spct.— GEIKIE. MARCH 22. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.-JAMES iv. 14. Time's a handbreadth; 'tis a tale; 'Tis a vessel under sail; "Tis an eagle in its way, Darting down upon its prey; QUARLES. |