the army of King Jehoshaphat-all of them utterly unknown. We see Amasiah for a moment. He swims out of the darkness like a little star across the field of a telescope, passes and is no more seen. We do not know what he did to deserve this eulogium. Perhaps there may have been some special deed of heroism; perhaps, while the rest were pressed men, he was a volunteer, and flung himself into the fight "to the Lord," regarding the King's cause as God's. It matters not. Blessed he whose life can be summed in that one sentence, by which he shall be known for ever!

Such cheerful self-surrender is the sum of all religion. We have here an antique form of piety, very strange to us. Amasiah's surrender to God expressed itself in daring courage on the field, and willingness to fling away life on the enemies' spears, like those wild warriors in the Soudan to-day. But, however unfamiliar the form, the underlying spirit must not be strange to us, if we are to have any religion at all. Glad, willing consecration of myself to God is the inmost heart of religion. The constant submission of my will, which is myself, the constant reference to God, and the all-mastering love which, kindled by His great love, makes submission delight and the thought of Him better than life;-these are at the bottom of all true religion to-day and ever. Yield thyself, in glad spontaneous obedience, to the Great Will, and say, "Here am I, send me. Whether to do or suffer, I am ready; move me as a pawn on thy board, no matter how or where." Each man must, like Amasiah, be priest and sacrifice, offered and offering. Each man must be a willing offerer and a willing offering. The cords of love must bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; there must be no pressed men in God's army. The will is the man, and not unless the will freely and even gladly consents to the sacrifice can any man offer himself to God. A grudging gift is no gift. We can stretch out our hands across the centuries to this shadowy hero, and recognise in him the same absolute self-devotion which is the life of Christianity. This glad consecration may hallow and be expressed by all life. We do not know how it was shown by Amasiah. No details are given or needed. The spirit of the life is all-important; the specific actions are less so. This one sentence is the essence of it all, the one drop distilled out of a thousand rosepetals. How little the different events will matter if this is the meaning of them all! How blessed our lives will be, how calm and

beautiful, if these words may describe them! Trivial things will be greatened; small sorrows, which irritate like gnats' bites, will be soothed. From greater sorrows the poison will be sucked; nothing will be monotonous, nothing repulsive. We shall need no inferior motives to keep us at our work; the soul will be stimulated to intenser activity; the wheels will revolve faster and smoother; life will be filled with new meaning and new beauty, and ourselves will rise to nobler stature and carry calmer and richer hearts. Could Amasiah's epitaph be ours? Would this sentence be the condensation of my life?

This glad consecration is accepted by God. This eulogium may be called God's recognition of Amasiah's service. He accepts imperfect consecration, and never grudges praise. There are a great many incomplete gifts on God's altar, and much lies there, not without His smile, which many of us would scarcely accept if brought to us, so stained and marred are our gifts of love and devotion. We see strange collections of worthless gifts hanging in some saints' shrines, and wonder that such "rubbish" is allowed there. God gladly accepts much which many of us would hastily sweep away. And even deeds of which the doers know only too well the flaws are counted by Him" an odour of a sweet smell."

God, then, remembers our poor service. This old-world warrior's deeds of daring devotion are written in no chronicle, and have faded for ever from human memory, as we and ours will do sooner or later. But what the world may say about us matters little, so long as we "receive " that "praise from God," which is one of His most wonderful promises to sinful men who give themselves to Christ. Whether our names be written in any other book matters nothing, so long as they "are written in the Lamb's book of life." Let us seek to have that same sentence as the Divine summary of our lives, seeing that we have in Christ's willing offering of Himself for us the most powerful of all reasons for our willingly offering ourselves to the Lord.

MAY 31ST.

Read Psalm xxii. and Matthew xxvii. 26-37.
SEEING WHICH IS NOT SEEING.

"Sitting down they watched him there" (Matthew xxvii. 36). We rightly fix our eyes on the central figure on the cross with absorbing attention, and are apt to

pass by the subordinate persons almost unnoticed. And yet much may be learned from them.

These soldiers-four in number, as we are told by St. John-had probably joined in their comrades' brutal mockery, had done the executioner's work of nailing the sufferers to the crosses which they then reared and fixed; they had divided the poor plunder of his clothes, and then, their work done, had sat stolidly down to prevent disturbance or rescue, and wait unconcernedly till death came. It is a strange thought that these four legionaries were so close for hours to the greatest event in the world's history, and gazed at it and Him with lack-lustre eyes, and saw nothing.

As we look at them looking at Him, we are reminded once again of men's ignorance of the true meaning and outcome of their deeds. These four were shut out in all probability by diversity of language from communication with the fierce crowd around them. They were accustomed to crucify rebels. This was to them only one more execution of a very familiar sort. They simply did what they were bid, with no feeling and no knowledge. Think of how coolly and carelessly a corporal's guard of English soldiers would carry out the death sentence on some Hindoo rebel against our authority. So did these men. How little they knew what they had done! They marched back to their barracks and went quietly to sleep that night, all unconscious that they had been actors in the most stupendous miracle, the blackest crime, and the Divinest mercy in the world's history.

So blind are we all, though in less extreme degrees. We never can tell what will come of our actions. We seldom know their real importance till they are past. We are like men sowing seeds in the dark. "Thou sowest not that body that shall be." Therefore the plain conclusion is-leave all questions about results alone, and be not concerned as to what "body" it may "please" God to "give" the seed we sow. We have only to concern ourselves about this end of the chain, and to make sure that the motive from which the action springs is right. Let the other end which was beyond our sight be cared for by Him.

We learn, too, the consoling lesson that Responsibility is limited by Knowledge. While the accomplices in Christ's death were guilty in varying degrees, singularly enough these very soldiers who actually crucified him were the least guilty. The hammer that

drove the nails into His palms was scarcely more of a tool than the men who used it in mechanical obedience and ignorance. In so far as they might have known and did not, their ignorance was sin, but in so far as their act was ignorant, their act was innocent. Pilate, who knew that he was shedding innocent blood, had hands fouler, for all his washing, than theirs, and the darkest guilt lay on the soul of the traitor who had walked in the light, and of the rulers who had shut their eyes against it. Surely for these rude and blind souls the whole power of His dying prayer availed, and they were forgiven, not knowing what they did. Let us then think with thankfulness of the "pure eyes and perfect judgment" of Him who knows the depth of our ignorance, and refrain from pronouncing on our brother's criminality, since we know not how thickly his soul may have been shrouded in darkness, and how innocent he may have been even in doing a hideous crime.

Again we see in these four stolid gazers how possible it is to look at Christ's sufferings and not see them. For long hours they sat and gazed at that spectacle of divinest love, which has drawn hearts to it ever since in a rapture of devotion and a passion of love; into which angels desire to look; and all which they saw was a dying Jew. They gambled for His robe; they waited wearily for His death. They saw it all, and they saw nothing.

So we may look at Christ's cross and see only a dying man. Many among us look with as little of emotion or faith or personal interest as His unconcerned executioners did. We say, "We see." Do we see there what is there-the Lamb of God dying for the sins of each of us, a more spotless and a more willing sacrifice than Isaac's, and given up to death by a more wonderful parental surrender than Abraham's? Do we see there the ground of all our hope, the source of all our peace, the pattern of our lives? Looking, do our hearts fill with thankfulness and melt in love? And as we turn away, do we bear the picture of that dying love persisting on our mind's eye, as a man may do who has gazed at the sun, and when he looks away still sees the flaming disc? Many there be who think they see and are blind. None are so blind as those "before whose eyes Jesus has been openly set forth crucified," and who have looked with languid gaze all their lives. Let us pray that our eyes may be purged, and that we may indeed behold that dying Lord who takes away the sin of the world!

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CHAPTER XXI.-AN INVITATION.

O the legal mind nothing, no doubt, can appear more monstrous than that Philip Langton, being in the position of her dead father's executor and her own guardian, should have been persuaded to hand over to Hester Darrell, a girl yet in her teens, so large a proportion of the money which he had in trust for her; on the other hand, some things occasionally seem quite natural to the legal mind which to that of the general public appear prodigious and abnormal enough.

It must be remembered, moreover, that Langton's relation to Hester was not merely that of guardian to ward. He had known her all her life, and regarded her with a devotion only second to that of her father himself, in whose position he now stood. It was a positive pleasure to him to indulge her, and a proportionate pain (only he had never tried it) to deny her anything she desired. I am inclined to think, indeed, that there is no limit to the folly which a man of Philip Langton's character is capable of committing to oblige a young and beautiful girl, who looks up to him with artless affection as to her only friend and protector. Of business matters, to say truth, he knew very little more than Hester, and found a difficulty in interesting himself in them, which to nine-tenths of his sex would have been inexplicable, while on money itself he set so small a store as in the opinion of most people would have qualified him for a lunatic asylum. He had a strong sense of legal right which caused him, as we have seen, to propose to himself some immediate means of making good to Hester the loss that she was about to sustain through his own good nature, but, that provision being effected, the matter was likely to trouble his Serene Executorship but very little. His chief solicitude, indeed, was that it should not trouble Hester, who, had she been aware of the legal aspect of the affair, would certainly never have made a request that placed such a huge personal responsibility upon Langton's shoulders. To her uninstructed mind it seemed as though she was only asking an advance of what was already her own, and in respect to which nobody but herself could be the loser. XXVI-24

On the other hand, it was a great comfort to Langton to know that this was not the case, and that, in reality, she was asking nothing that could hurt herself but only him. It is probable, indeed, that the whole transaction would even have given him pleasure, but for the doubts he had in his own mind as to the necessity of the money being advanced at all. As to the object to which it was to be applied, it was impossible under the circumstances to question the girl with any particularity; the claim, whatever it was, evidently appealed to her sense of honour rather than to that of right; but in the interview which, as had been agreed on, followed that in which her request was made, Langton did make an effort to assure himself that she was not at least the victim to a fraud.

"When a man dies, my dear Hester, attempts are often made to obtain money upon his account from his friends, which would never have been made to himself. I do hope that you are well convinced of the justice of the present demand, and especially that you are not acceding to it upon the bare word of any individual.

"I have written proofs of it, Mr. Langton," answered Hester gravely, "in my dear father's own handwriting."

Her pale face flushed to her forehead, and her voice trembled as she spoke. Langton felt himself a wretch for having caused her such obvious distress of mind, and, even if her words and tone had not fully corroborated his previous view of the matter, would have abstained from putting another question to her.

"You shall have the money in a few days," he answered gently; "it is unnecessary to say another word about it."

"If I do not again allude to it, dear Mr. Langton," she replied, while the tears rushed to her eyes, "it is not, be sure, because I do not understand the unusual, possibly even the unexampled, trust you have thus placed in my bare word. The gratitude that I feel towards you, you on the other hand can never understand, because you do not know how heavy is the load that your generous delicacy has thus lifted from my heart. There are circumstances which prevent me from treating you in this matter with the frankness and candour that you deserve, but henceforth, and in all things else, I shall come to you for help and

counsel as dear papa bade me do with almost his last breath."

"I hope so; indeed, I hope so," was the earnest reply.

"It is not much of a guerdon for your great kindness," she continued, with a smile, "that I should thus impose upon you the task of adviser to a young and foolish girl."

"It will, nevertheless," he answered gravely, "be a very great pleasure to me, and the sooner I undertake the duties of my position the better. You have had many communications from your father's friends no doubt. Have any of them suggested a plan for your future life?”

"Many of them have been very kind, most kind," said Hester warmly. "It seemed that every one strove to express, at dear papa's funeral, some tender recollection of him."

"If you refer to the wreaths that were so bountifully bestowed on that occasion," said Langton drily, "they are blossoms, my dear girl, I regret to say, of a kind that do not bear much fruit."

"Still, what could friends do more, or what more would I have had them do? Even if I had been much poorer than I am, dear Mr. Langton, I should never have dreamt of asking

"

offer might have seemed to me, but now, of course, quite out of the question."

"You mean that you could not bear your share of even their moderate housekeeping," observed Langton thoughtfully, and wondering to himself if such an arrangement was within his means, and if so, whether it could be made without her knowledge.

"Of course not. Pray do not suppose, my dear Mr. Langton, that I have not the courage to look my future in the face. It will, I know, be something altogether different from my past. Since I have been here I have now and then accompanied Grace and Marion in their visits to poor people. I am ashamed to say that it was a new world to me, and I am infinitely obliged to them for my introduction to it. I now know that that is the real world, and that the one in which I have been living is an exceptional state of existence. There are people all around me, to whom the money which is still left to me would seem like opulence; people who, when they are hungry, have not enough even of bread to eat; who when they are cold, lack clothes and firing; who, when they are sick, have not the means to purchase the most ordinary comforts. Do not pity me, Mr. Langton, for I may honestly say that save for that other loss (wherein I claim kin with the most miserable) how fortunate by contrast with that of thousands of my fellow-creatures is my own lot, and how little reason I have to repine at it.'

رز

Hester looked up at him a little puzzled, then went on unconscious of the sarcasm. "The kindness of some of them I shall never forget," she continued; "Mrs. West has been a second mother to me."

Quite true," said Langton, with enthusiasm, "one in a thousand, one in ten thousand."

"And her girls have been as sisters."

"That is not to be wondered at-I mean,' observed Langton, correcting himself, "that they are excellent girls, capital girls."

"This house has been my home for weeks," continued Hester with emotion. "Consider what a guest I have been, bowed down by grief, and of necessity the most cheerless of companions. Yet they have never suffered me to feel that I have worn out my welcome. Nay more, Mrs. West has even offered that I should remain with her indefinitely, a thing not to be thought of, perhaps, in any case, however tempting the

"

"Do not say that, dear Mr. Langton,' pleaded Hester earnestly. "Do not do violence to your noble nature by imitating the cuckoo note of the harsh and selfish. Do you think that anything can make a mother used to the sight of her children lacking bread, or in pain, without the means of mitigating it, or pining for the fresh air that she has no means of purchasing for them? Is it not enough that we should turn our ears away from the cry of the poor, without making light of the misery that extorts it ?"

Langton gazed at Hester with amazement. He had given her the credit that men usually give to girls they think well of, for tender and charitable thoughts. That she should be grave, sorrowful, and even devout, was under the circumstance to be expected; but the earnestness and enthusiasm she was exhibiting were altogether unlooked for.

She had never seemed to him so gentle and so pure, or, as he expressed it to himself,

so like a saint, as she looked in her deep mourning, but he had set it all down to the misery of her own condition, and to the sense of her personal calamity. That she should be taking these larger views of life at a time when her own share of it was being so narrowed astounded him. As he gazed at her with wondering eyes, it struck him for the first time that there was a change in her face, beyond what was to be accounted for by the circumstances of her new position. Could this have been wholly caused by the mere fact of her having visited a few poor folks, as he understood in a vague way, it was customary for some young ladies to do? Or was it not, more likely, owing to some experience of another kind, perhaps in connection with the disposal of the sum for which she had appealed to him, and which might have thrown her thoughts out of their usual groove? For the moment it even struck him that in her highly wrought and abnormal state of mind, it was not unlikely that she was contemplating a retirement from the world and devoting herself to deeds of charity. Whether such a course was right or not, he felt certain that she was at present in a state of mind very unsuitable for a decision so important.

"You must forgive me, Hester," he answered gravely, "if my feelings of duty towards my fellow-creatures are just now a little more restricted than they should be by reason of the more immediate duty to yourself, which, as you have just said, has been imposed upon me by your dead father. In granting you, as you have admitted, so much more than you had any reason to expect, I have not forfeited my authority over you, remember, in other respects. I have no desire to pry into your secrets, I have waived my right to do so in one instance

"What, from Lady Barton?" exclaimed Langton, smiling. "That goes far indeed to restore the average. If one overrates the good in some persons one underrates it in others. She probably knew, however, that she was making a proposal that would never be accepted."

"I should be sorry to think that," said Hester gravely. "Her note was curt and strange enough, yet I think it was sincere ; you shall, however, judge for yourself." She took from her desk an envelope containing two enclosures, and handed him one of them. "DEAR NIECE,

"I am truly sorry to hear of the calamity that has befallen you. I know nothing, of course, of the state of your affairs. It is probable that among your many friends you will find a home in every way more agreeable to you than Medbury; but if this should not happen to be the case you may count upon me to give you a genuine welcome. "Yours sincerely,

"ELIZABETH BARTON."

"Stiff enough, indeed," was Langton's comment," and yet I agree with you that her ladyship means what she says. It is very unfortunate that there should have been so wide a breach between you, and for so long."

"You are thinking, of course, what dear papa would have wished me to do," said Hester gently. "It is very curious, but within a few days of his death he conversed with me upon this very subject: if anything should happen to him, he bade me remember that it was not his wish that I should_reject any overture from Aunt Elizabeth. It was really almost as if he foresawturned away her head and finished the sen

She

Langton sighed also, but for another reason; it was clear to him that the Colonel had not only "almost" but quite foreseen what was about to happen, and had made his arrangements accordingly.

This, of course, leaves you free to act, Hester, in accordance with your own views in the matter," observed Langton thoughtfully. "You acknowledged her ladyship's letter, I suppose?"

"Yes; and asked for time to consider her kind offer. I felt I was not just then in a fit condition to decide upon a matter, to me, so momentous, and also that the disposal of myself was not in my own hands.

How