"We brought no friends with us into this world," as it has been well observed, "nor can we carry them out from hence; they were given us by God, Who can raise up others, and they are taken away by Him, one by one, the better to prepare us for our own approaching death, when we must part with all at once." As he whom we are accompanying to the grave has been forced to leave houses and lands, and all his worldly possessions behind him, so must we learn to do without him,-to do without everything which God may withdraw from us. As S. Chrysostom says, "We want no superfluities, if we brought nothing with us, and shall take nothing away with us." The soul of

man has need of nothing but of God: all else is superfluous, to be received with thankfulness, indeed, while bestowed, but not to be murmured after when removed; and therefore it is, that to the declaration that "we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out," the Church, on the occasion to which we are alluding, adds, as part of the same sentence,

1 Hom. xvii, in Tim.

the words of one who, when he spake them, had seen in a single day his ten children slain, and himself made a beggar: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."

It is not enough for the true servant of God to be patient, he must advance yet a step further; he must be thankful. Shall I receive

good from the hands of the Lord, and shall I not receive evil? will be his constant feeling, or rather his faith will have taught him that through that which the world calls evil, God is ever working out good for them that love Him. He will recognize in all that comes upon him, the loving hand of a heavenly Father, and when called upon to suffer, he will rejoice if by any means he is a partaker of Christ's sufferings, in the hope that when His glory shall be revealed, it may be granted him to be glad with exceeding joy. He will track his Saviour along that dolorous way which once he trod from Gethsemane to Calvary, he will ever keep before him that series of unutterable sufferings; he will ask himself continually, Was ever sorrow like unto that sorrow? and thus

the contemplation of his own light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will produce in him an ever-growing sense of thankfulness. Trouble, pain, unkindness, worldly loss, separation, bereavement, what are they all but shadows of the cross?

Happy they on whose shoulders it is laid, if only they will receive it as a precious burden! May God for His dear Son's sake, help us not to wish its load away, yea, may He strengthen us to bear it, to love it, and find that which is to be found in even its sharpest pang and bitterest agony,-comfort, peace, and life eternal!

LECTURE IV.

ON THE PROPER PSALMS.

The Daily Spectacle of Mortality.

PSALM XXXix. 6.

"VERILY EVERY MAN LIVING IS ALTOGETHER VANITY."

THE Church, in her Order for the Burial of the Dead, assumes that those who have lived and died in her communion, have walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called; and as S. Paul, when he wrote to the Christians at Rome, or Corinth, or elsewhere, did not scruple to address them as "Saints," as the "elect," as "sanctified in Christ Jesus," and "beloved in God," because he knew that they had been admitted into the true fold, and it was no part of his intention to express an opinion how far any

individual here and there had erred and strayed from it; so our Holy Mother hesitates not to apply the language of comfortable hope to all her children who are brought to her for burial, though she judiciously uses terms which are capable of being applied with very different degrees of hope,—from the greatest confidence to the faintest shadow of a feeling short of despair; she judges nothing before the time, but trusts that they whom she has known to have begun well maintained their stedfastness unto the end; she forbears all allusion to the comparative state of individuals, and leaves everything beyond the mere fact of external communion with herself, to the decision of that day when the Lord shall come, "Who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts." Hence it is, as we have seen, that she ever meets the dead with reverent and kindly welcome, permitting the introductory sentences of the burial service to be sung, if so it should seem good, in order that by thanksgiving and the voice of melody, it may be testified that she sorrows not as they who