where He was," as if regardless of the message sent by the sisters of the dying man; and He did not come to Bethany till four days after the funeral. During this interval how mysterious does our Lord's conduct appear! especially when it is remembered that Lazarus was a "friend," of whose hospitality and that of his sisters Jesus and His disciples had often partaken; and "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus." He is attentive to strangers in distress, and appears to neglect His friends. The mystery was unravelled, when Jesus, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, called Lazarus out of his grave, and "many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things that Jesus did, believed on Him." (John xi. 45.) Even the sisters of Lazarus, when they witnessed the result, must have shed tears of thankfulness and joy for their brother's illness and death, and for Jesus's delay, which for a time occasioned them great perplexity and distress. Their brother was a living demonstration that Jesus is the Christ of God; but this he became by means of his sickness and death.

So it will be in the end of the world, with respect to all the perplexities and sufferings of God's children. In that day the design of every providential dispensation will be disclosed to the wonder of angels and men, and so as to call forth everlasting adoration and praise. In the meanwhile, the best and wisest of men "see through a glass, darkly," and must therefore submit to "walk by faith, not by sight.' Of this, however, they are assured, that their "light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." (2 Cor. iv. 17.) It is hence

their duty, in every season of suffering, to preserve a temper of mind which is equally remote from stoical apathy on the one hand, and from fretfulness and impatience on the other. They are neither to " despise the chastening of the Lord," nor to "faint when they are rebuked of Him;" but to regard His corrections with becoming seriousness, anxious to profit by them all, and to maintain a calm resignation to His gracious will. (Heb. xii. 5.) By the cultivation of such a temspiritual profit from every painful event, and by their example will exhibit the power and excellence of true religion, to the glory of God, and the benefit of all around them.

per, they will derive

The truth is,

"Not deeply to discern, not much to know,

Mankind were made to wonder and adore."

Mysteries everywhere abound. God's act of creation is a mystery; His works, in every department, the dispensations of His providence, and the scheme of redemption, are all full of mysteries, which the human intellect labours in vain to fathom. Why some nations enjoy the full light of the Gospel, and others remain for ages in the unbroken darkness of heathenism;-why some persons are unavoidably born to poverty, sickness, pain, obscurity, and an early death; and others are born to riches, health, honour, and a long life;-why some are successful in all their undertakings, so that with them property rapidly accumulates; and others prosper in nothing, but are thwarted and baffled in every project they form, and in every effort they put forth ;-why some persons enjoy all the delights and advantages of education, so as to realize all the pleasures and benefits

of literature and science; while others, without any fault of their own, are doomed to a life of ignorance and barbarity of manners, knowing scarcely any gratification but that which arises from the indulgence of their animal propensities;—are questions which we cannot answer, and never shall be able to answer, till we rise into a higher state of being. Things that were incomprehensible to us in our childhood, we thoroughly understood when we had attained to a ripeness of years; and what we know not now, we shall know hereafter.

Instead, then, of attempting to pry into that which is inscrutable, every wise man will say, "All the days of my appointed' intellectual minority will I wait,' till I attain the full perfection of my nature at the resurrection of the just, when the works, the plans, and the purposes of God will be seen in the pure light of heaven. In the meanwhile, I will, in the strength of Divine grace, believe His word; live a life of faith in His Son, 'who loved me, and gave Himself for me;' walk in 'all His ordinances and commandments; and meekly submit to His fatherly correction, whenever He lays His hand upon me,-thankful if by any means I may be a partaker of His holiness, and obtain admission into His kingdom and glory."

NOTES.

Note A, page 2.

"FEW, if any, of the ancient pagan philosophers acknowledged God to be, in the most proper sense, the Creator of the world. By calling Him Anμovpyòs, 'the Maker of the world,' they did not mean that He brought it out of nonexistence into being; but only that He built it out of preexistent materials, and disposed it into a regular form and order. Even those philosophers who held God an incorporeal essence, yet supposed two first principles of things, really distinct from one another, both existing from eternity; an incorporeal mind and passive matter." "The famous Galen, after having acknowledged that the opinion of Moses, who ascribed the production of all things to God, is far more agreeable to reason than that of Epicurus, who attributed the whole frame of things to a fortuitous concussion of atoms, yet asserts the pre-existence of matter; and that the power of God could not extend itself beyond the capacity of matter which it wrought upon; and that this was that in which Plato, and those of the Greeks who writ rightly upon the nature of things, differed from Moses. I would observe, by the way, that here is plain proof that the learned heathens were sensible that Moses held that God not only formed the world out of matter, but created the matter itself out of which the world was made, which the Greek philosophers denied." "The learned Dr. Thomas Burnet, who was well acquainted with the opinions of the ancients, says that the Ionic, Pythagoric, Platonic, and Stoic schools all agreed in asserting the eternity of matter; and that the doctrine that matter was created out of nothing

seems to have been unknown to the philosophers, and which they had no notion of."-Leland's "Necessity and Advantages of the Christian Revelation," vol. i., pp. 305–307. Edition of 1764.

According to Xenophon, Socrates refused to inquire into the origin and operations of the material universe, being discouraged by the discordant and contradictory opinions of those who professed to have prosecuted such inquiries with success. "Nor did he amuse himself to reason of the secrets of nature, nor to search into the manner of the creation of what the sophists call the world, nor to dive into the cause of the motions of the heavens. On the contrary, he exposed the folly of such as give themselves up to these contemplations; and he asked if it was after having acquired a perfect knowledge of human things, that they undertook to search into the divine? or if they thought themselves very wise in neglecting what concerned them, to employ themselves in things above them? He was astonished, likewise, that they did not see that it was impossible for men to comprehend anything of all those wonders, seeing they who have the reputation of being most knowing in them are of quite different opinions, and can agree no better than so many fools and madmen. For as some of these are not afraid of the most dangerous and frightful accidents, while others are in dread of what is not to be feared: so, too, among those philosophers some are of opinion that there is no action but what may be done in public, nor word that may not freely be spoken before the whole world; while others, on the contrary, believe that we ought to avoid the conversation of men, and keep in a perpetual solitude. Some have despised the temples and the altars, and have taught not to honour the gods; while others have been so superstitious as to worship wood, stones, and irrational creatures. And as to the knowledge of natural things, some have confessed but one only being: others have admitted an infinite number.