the light he had; and this parable warns us, that God remembers and records the hours at which He calls, even though the labourer may refuse or disdain to be hired.

SECTION LIX.

(Chapter xx. verse 17 to the end.)

THE portion of Scripture which I have just read is a very painful and humiliating one, and affords a melancholy evidence of our fallen state. Our Lord, as you remember, had just been enforcing, and illustrating by a most striking and comprehensive parable, the declaration that 66 many that are first shall be last." He was led to this, as I mentioned, by a desire to check any rising pride in the minds of His disciples, by the promise He had given them, that "in the regeneration they should sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." The very next conversation we find Jesus holding with his disciples, must have almost immediately followed the preceding, and would, in deed, seem to have been suggested by the same earnest desire to correct any lingering misunderstandings as to the nature of His kingdom,-for He again begins to recapitulate with still more minute detail the sufferings, and indignities, and cruel death, which were to befall Him in Jerusalem, whither He was now hastening. Twice before had He dwelt on

the same topic; twice before had He warned them that they were following a Master whose kingdom was not only not of this world, but whose only inheritance on earth for himself and for them was a cross instead of a crown. And yet, scarcely had He finished the sad detail, ere the painful and incongruous scene is exhibited of two of his disciples, and, alas! too, aided and headed by their mother, petitioning for themselves the highest posts of honour and distinction in that future kingdom. And just consider who these two were they were James and John, the latter honoured with the significant title of "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and both peculiarly favoured and distinguished by their Master. There would seem, however, to have been somewhat of con scious shame in their manner of making the request. They put their mother forward as their mouthpiece, as if a mother's love, a mother's wishes, or a mother's commands, had overruled their own better feeling, and they had yielded to her ambitious views. And even in that mother's manner there is somewhat of hesitation, as if unwilling to state at first the extent of her desire; or, it may be, in her ignorance, desiring to extort a promise from Jesus, without His knowing what her request would be!

It was, indeed, a bold and presumptuous petition; they could have known but little of the nature of that kingdom, to the highest dignities of which they thus aspired, where "the elders.

that are before the throne" are described as falling down before Him that sitteth on the throne, and casting their crowns before the throne, and saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power." As that vision in after years met the eye of the beloved disciple, with what saddened feelings of shame and regret must the poor exile in Patmos have thought of the day when he made that illadvised and ignorant request, that he and his brother might sit, the one on the right hand, and the other on the left, in their Master's kingdom. And yet there was a germ, a blade, as it were, of faith mingled with their ignorance; their Master had, indeed, told them of torture and death, and of being delivered to the Gentiles, and crucified, and slain, but He had also spoken of a glorious triumph on the third day, when He should rise again. They pass over the shame, and through the agonies of the cross to the certainty of a coming kingdom. And our Lord's rebuke to them is so full of gentleness and tenderness, and though He reproves their presumption, yet so touchingly alludes to that love which should hereafter prompt them to drink of His cup of sorrow, and be baptized with His baptism of blood, that, in that spirit of mercy which would not quench the smoking flax nor bruise the broken. reed, He seems to forgive the pride that dictated, in the faith that prompted their request. But what were the feelings of the rest at this pain

ful exhibition? Did they sorrow over a brother's fall, or hasten to plead in his behalf? Alas, no! "when the ten heard it, they were filled with indignation against the two brethren," and I fear their indignation arose chiefly from the supposition that their own ambitious views had been forestalled by their shrewder and more worldlywise companions, and that their resentment was not so much for their Master as for themselves. Our Lord does not declare that admission into His kingdom should not be given to these supplicants, however premature or presumptuous their request; nor does He limit His own power, as if He exercised only a delegated sway. There are, indeed, boundaries which even Omnipotence cannot pass, and there are certain limits within which admission into heaven is confined. God cannot deny Himself; God cannot act contrary to His word, His truth, His justice; and so the Son here says of admission into His kingdom, "It is not mine to give, except to those ordained, elected, and made meet for the inheritance. The Father's will is my will,-it is not His will that heaven should be set open to the proud or the overbearing, nor is it mine; it is not His will that one of His little ones should perish, nor is it mine. Leave, then, these poor thoughts of pre-eminence and vainglory to earthly potentates and their satellites, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly, and my mission on earth is to be myself a servant, and 'to give my life a ransom for many.'

SECTION LX.

(Chapter xxi. verses 1—17.)

JESUS was drawing nigh not only to Jerusalem, but to the close of his earthly course, and we now see a manifest difference attending all His actions. Before, He courted privacy, now He would have publicity in the earlier periods of His ministry, He had withdrawn Himself from the gaze and gratitude of men. He not unfre

quently took the objects of His mercy apart to be healed, and charged them that they should tell no man; we now find Him in the very temple, surrounded by friends and foes, healing both "the lame and the blind." We see Him avowedly entering Jerusalem, not, indeed, as a conqueror, nor with much of worldly pomp, but still assuredly in triumphant procession. He not only permits and accepts, as His rightful due, the homage and acclamations of the attendant crowds, but He claims, and takes steps to claim, their acknowledgment of Him as the predicted Messiah, the very King whom their prophet, Zechariah, had foretold more than 500 years before should enter Jerusalem in the very way in which Jesus did actually enter it. There are several of the prophecies relative to our Lord which are so singular in their circumstances, and so minute in their details, that, on any other ground than that they were the utterance and inspiration of