needed friends. His first friend, like ours, was His mother.

"Mother blest!

To whom, caressing and caressed,
Clings the Eternal Child."

Omnipotence became helpless. Mary was His first friend; then Joseph; then many whom we know not. He had friends, doubtless, in boyhood; we know He had friends in manhood-the twelve; the family at Bethany; the women that ministered to Him. He gave to them according to the infinite riches of His love and divinity, but they also gave to Him out of their love, and what they could. They were truly His friends.

And we, we may be His friends. Difference of rank does not prevent friendship; a humble friend can help us much, and help us just because he is in humble circumstances; his position enables him to do us many a useful service. So may we be the friends of Christ; we may live so as to please Him; we may give in His name to those whom He loves, and who need what we have; He counts it done to Himself. He lives still and wants and suffers in His members.

And while we give to Him, He will, out of the infinite stores of His abundance, give to us. The unconscious influence of His presence will work most blessed results in us. A man is known by his friends; a man is moulded by his friends. They say that man and wife, when they are truly and deeply and long attached to one another, actually grow like to

one another, unconsciously adopt each other's ways and habits. “As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." When the Apostles began their ministry, they were recognized by their likeness to their friend and Lord; men "took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus." Let us hold frequent converse in prayer, in meditation, in working with Jesus Christ as our Friend; and as we live on thus, we shall be silently, surely made like Him, our Friend.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SOUL IN SORROW.

"He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-heartod."-ISAIAH lxi. 1.

"As long as Christ has a member upon earth, there will be something for those members to suffer."-BURKITT.

"I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be

A pleasant road;

I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me

Aught of its load;

I do not ask that flowers should always spring

Beneath my feet;

I know too well the poison and the sting

Of things too sweet:

For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead,

Lead me aright

Though strength should falter, and though heart

should bleed

Through Peace to Light."

A. A. PROCTER.

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."-SHAKESPEARE.

"The world's a room of sickness, where each heart

Knows its own anguish and unrest.

The truest wisdom there and noblest art,

Is his who skills of comfort best."

Christian Year.

OUR Lord's first words after His resurrection were, "Woman, why weepest thou?" The first utterance of the risen Saviour must surely be important and significant and worth meditating upon. Those words are not surely recorded for nothing; they could not have been spoken at such a time by Him who doeth all things well, without reason and special fitness. The last time those lips had spoken Christ was hanging upon the cross, wounded, scorned, shamed, and those who loved Him most were grouped round, and all they could do was to weep. Now His great work was accomplished; He had redeemed the world, He had risen again, and He returned for a little while to those who loved Him. There can evidently be no chance or accident in what He says and does; there must be design, there can be nothing but most perfect fitness. There is most likely a mine of wealth, a very deep well of truth; there is doubtless more than we can yet fully comprehend, but at least let us try and find some good thing, some truth.

Peter and John had been at the sepulchre before Mary, "but Him they saw not." It was not to men, but to a woman, that the first word was spoken after the resurrection by the Saviour of mankind. Here at least we can see a reason and fitness. By woman came sin and death; to a woman may fitly come the first word that tells of sin atoned, death vanquished. To woman the doom of her sin had been pronounced in one word, "Sorrow." That doom was reversed now; the woman's promised Seed had come and trampled the serpent's head, and borne away the

curse in His own suffering and dying body; and so He speaks first to woman's ear the good tidings, and says, "Why weepest thou?"

In a garden they two, God and woman, had spoken then of sin and shame and sorrow and death; in a garden they two, God and woman, speak now of pardon, and joy, and life eternal. And so He speaks to her not by her personal name, but as representative of her sex and of the human race; He says not to her "Mary," but "Woman;" He says nothing of Himself, for His presence itself tells all, and He says only to her, "Why weepest thou?" The world is full of sorrow; a weeping woman is the first person Christ meets as He returns in triumph to the world, after His victory over death and hell. This was not an accident; it was design, it was a parable, it was a revelation. The Saviour of such a world as this must be "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; " not Christ of Galilee only must be "Christus Consolator," but the risen Christ also. This is the Christ we want, and shall want till we leave this troublesome world. Nor are Mary's words less full of deep truth. "Why weepest thou?" He said; and she, "They have taken away my Lord."

To be free was the tempter's bait, and man broke with God to be, as he hoped, freer and happier; but this is the only end, that he seeks again His Lord with tears. His Lord is taken away, and the world and he have gone to rack and ruin since. He is free from a good Lord, but slave to many evil