past years of their life, but they cannot recall one perfectly happy day.

"Strange cozenage!

None would live past years again."

What, then, does experience teach us? Cynical despair? Yes, to the unbeliever, to the man of the world, to the earthly and sensual, to the man who has his portion in this life.*

But what says St. Paul of the teaching of experience ? Experience worketh hope." What an experience of human life St. Paul had! He tells us something of his disappointments, of the hard life he led, of the treatment he received from men, of the wages meted out to him by the Master he served so faithfully; but he says all this taught him Hope! Hope deferred generated hope; hope disappointed, hope crushed, all are turned to hope again by the subtle alchymy of that strong soul. He hoped against hope. Like the corn sown in the fat soil of Egypt, which is cut down and fed off by cattle, his hope sprang up strong and rank after ill-usage, and bore much fruit.†

* "Both the systems of philosophy most celebrated in antiquity seem directly or indirectly to have furnished their disciples with a justification of suicide. Is it not a tacit avowal of their universal failure in their universal object? The improvement of human life to its highest value and the attainment of perfect happiness were the common object of both; death, the gloomy refuge of despair, discovers itself among the maxims or the suggestions or the inferences of both."- Archer Butler.

+ "Man is evidently a supernatural being; he contains powers and tendencies far greater than the present order of things calls out."-"Two Friends."

"If we have hope only in this life, we are most miserable; " but we rest not our hopes here; we anchor our souls beyond; we "drink of the brook in the way, and lift up the head." We sip the sweetnesses of life and passion; we wrap ourselves tighter as the blasts of trouble beat upon us, and still press on.

And what is the ground of our confidence? The sure word of Him who cannot lie, promises numberless, promises clear and definite, promises no less precious because they are hidden and veiled, and must be sought for by comparing Scripture with Scripture. For example: in the time of His humiliation, when our Lord made Himself indeed one with us, the net broke; but turn we on a few pages, read the record of His risen life; notice how once again He bids His disciples cast the net into the sea; once again it is full to overflowing; but now it does not break; for the time of flaws and failures has passed, the earnest expectation is at last realized; the divinely implanted dissatisfaction with the imperfect is justified; the instinctive longing for the perfect is satiated; "Simon Peter drew the net to land (not, as before, to the boat, which presently began to sink) full of great fishes; and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken."

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SOUL AT CALVARY.

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son."-HEBREWS i. 1, 2.

"Oh lead mine eye

With holy yet with steadfast gaze
Into Thy Passion's sanctuary."

J. M. NEALE.

"Oh, all ye who pass by, whose eyes and mind
To worldly things are sharp, but to Me blind;
To Me who took eyes that I might you find :
Was ever grief like mine ?"

G. HERBERT.

"O Cross, that only know'st the woes
He suffered erst who hung on thee,
Speak to our hearts of those deep throes,
Those broken words, that agony."

Lyra Eucharistica.

LET us try and place ourselves on Calvary, and learn something of the infinite teachings of the crucifixion of our Blessed Lord. The silent Cross speaks as no man, no voice, no words can speak. God's words had been heard, but heard by dull ears; at Calvary His word may be seen by the

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more faithful eyes." The Word of God hangs upon the Cross; it is the open Book of the revelation of God. Men despised His messages, but He said, "They will reverence My Son." The Word of God lies before thee, O man; read and understand. Alas, some say, "I cannot read, for I am not learned;" and other some, "The Book is sealed." As at Calvary itself, so still men pass their Saviour and know Him not; some wag their heads and mock; some think it is nothing to them. We should have thought that it had been written plain enough, "All this for thee. See what sin is by its penalty; see the value of thy soul, by the price paid for its redemption; see the love of God for thee, by what He suffers for thee." But sin has seared men's hearts; the world with its fashions has distorted their vision; lusts and selflove and mere animal life, long practised, have depraved them. They can sit and hear, they can stand and see; they can come well fed and clothed, and sit at ease, and look upon their Saviour bleeding, agonized, dying upon the Cross, and yet they feel nothing. Men and women can sigh over a novel, they can shed tears at a theatre; but the Passion of their Lord does not move them, scarcely interests them.

How shall we lead the soul to understand the Passion? It is too big for words, too wide and deep, and high and infinite. It seems too sacred to touch, too vast to attempt. Where shall we begin? how, where, when make an end? The

Book is written within and without; the world itself could not contain all that might be written. Nay, it is more than a book: it lives; it is a Word. As we look and read it grows; it spreads open ever into unfathomable depths; it leads us off this way and that way into paths we never trod before; it has always something new; it touches chord after chord in the soul, and there come forth strains that no words can express; and as we listen we are borne far away by wondrous melodies, wailing in minor, echoing, rising and falling, swelling and dying away, till we know not whether we are in the body or out of the body.

Let us stand in spirit upon Calvary. Slowly and painfully under the hot sun the Holy One has toiled up the hill, the strength of His perfect frame nearly exhausted by the agonies and cruelties of the whole night and morning. They offer Him wine mingled with myrrh; He tastes, but will not drink; a bitter taste, but no refreshment; a smarting twinge to His bruised and bleeding mouth, but no draught to deaden pain. His last taste in life bitter! A parable this; a fund of thought and meditation! Eat and drink, O sensual man, who never denied thyself one single thing for Christ's sake; eat and drink the best, and plenty of it; eat and drink and enjoy thyself; thy Lord was hungry, thirsty, faint, and His mouth was filled with bitterness for thee! What is the thought of thy heart? Speak it out. "What is that to me? see thou to that."