But the Lord has different ways by which he effects His designs. He dealt otherwise with Thomas, otherwise with Peter and John. Before drawing some general inferences from my discourse, I shall yet cast a glance at this difference, as it presents itself in strict connection with the subject.

It has often been asked, how it was that Peter and John did not see angels whilst Mary saw them. The answer is, that Christ treats each one according to his nature and wants. In the case before us, He accommodates His dealings to the dif ferent nature of man and woman. In man there prevails by nature thought and reflection, strength and courage, judgment and a desire to examine, to investigate and to come to a result by his own activity. He is fearless and disdains mere wishes; he is decided in his belief or unbelief. Woman, on the other hand, is tender and delicate, full of feeling, retires within herself, and always seeks for protection. It is her nature to believe and confide, and when she can do neither, tears bedim her eyes and sadness fills her bosom. In view of this natural difference, Christ treated Peter and John differently from Mary. Let us follow out this difference.

Peter and John went to the grave, John fast, Peter slowly; John impelled by love, Peter retarded by the remembrance of his sin in denying the Lord. Arriving at the grave, John just looks into it, but Peter sprang into it; then, John having followed, they examined it, and finding the napkin and the linen, each at its place, they come to the conclusion that the Lord has risen. They stood, therefore, in no need of the sight of angels. But Mary needed comfort; she felt sad; she was under the dominion, not of thought, but of feeling; hence the Lord sends angels to console her and uses entirely different means to bring life and light into her heart, to change her deepest darkness into the highest joy.

We must, therefore, not expect that what we have observed. in the life of Mary, will also happen in the same or in a similar way to us in order that we may believe. As the condition of every one, his disposition, his circumstances have something peculiar, so the Lord will approach him in a peculiar manner, in a way best adapted to his case. Let each one of us be

watchful and direct his attention to whatever may ripen for him in the course of time; let none of us suffer anything to pass by unnoticed which may tend to advance our eternal welfare; for the lowest as well as the highest, the least as well as the greatest, may be used by the will of God to lead us to Him.

Having now shown the effects which the sepulchre had on Mary and how her sadness, while standing at it, was changed into joy, I shall proceed to consider what consolation we ought to derive from the grave of Christ.

In contemplating the sepulchre of our Saviour, two thoughts present themselves; the one relates to our own graves; the other, to the grave of sin. We must all die. One supplants the other, and in turn he is himself supplanted. According to a certain order we appear upon the stage of activity, and according to a certain order we are called off again, the one amid joy and happiness, the other amid grief and distress. Whoever may have shone in honor or power, whoever may have been weighed down by the troubles and cares of his short existence, the one as well as the other, is destined to be confined to a solitary grave, there to moulder and be forgotten. At the end of our short journey the grave awaits every one of us, and yawns to receive whatever lives. Millions of graves are lying under the heavens, and every evening the pale light of the stars falls upon new ones. When we see the work of death around us, can we, much as we would desire it, avoid thinking that our time also will soon come, when we shall be alone and excluded from the light of the sun, when we must part with the sweet and lovely habit, to be and to live, and when a stone, which we shall not be able to roll off, will close up our dark and narrow dwelling? We are young yet; some of us at least are in the bloom of life; but death is not satisfied with plucking the superannuated, grey-headed sire, who, like ripe fruit, by its own weight, separates himself from the tree of life and falls into the hand of death; it likewise seizes the little child, when its first smiles have scarcely saluted the light of the sun, and with great ease converts the cradle into a coffin. When, now, we reflect on the grave of the Saviour, we must

think of our own also; it is our duty to do so; and when we see the stone rolled off from the tomb of Christ, we cannot help asking ourselves: Who will roll off the stone from our graves? or shall it remain forever upon them? Shall these members that now form a whole, that now are animated by the same stream of life and that we call our own, never be united again after they have once been dissolved into dust?

But again: Reflecting on the grave of the Saviour, we cannot help thinking of sin, which is followed by death, as death is by the grave. If the stone that lies on the grave is heavy and impenetrable and renders our dark abode inaccessible, the stone of sin that lies on our hearts is still more so; and if we cannot remove the former we can much less remove the latter. Its weight is heavy and presses us down; as the stone on the grave excludes us from the light of the sun, so the stone on our hearts excludes us from communion with God, impedes every noble endeavor and shuts us up within the sphere of our own transgressions and of our ruin. And at no time will the stone of sin press harder upon us than in the hour of death. Fear will seize us then; for to meet an offended judge without the hope of pardon, is an awful thought. To go into eternity without knowing what awaits us there, must render the hour of death more terrible than the most glowing imagination can represent it to be.

When such thoughts cast us down and we reflect upon Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre of our Saviour, we are disposed to ask: What consolation may be derived from the grave of Christ?

The grave of Christ was the first that could not retain its prey. He whom death attempted to destroy, came forth a conqueror over it. In rolling off the stone from His grave, He rolled off the stone of sin from the hearts of all those who believe in Him. The grave can no longer alarm the believer in Christ; for the Prince of Life of His own free will and from a desire to redeem us from the terrors of death, sank into it. The believer knows that the hour is coming in the which all who are in their graves, shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resur

rection of life, but they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. Before Christ had suffered death, the grave was dark, but now light shines around and in it. Its terrors are gone; it rather invites all those who, weary of life and worn out by sufferings and cares and anxieties, long for a haven of rest, to throw off their burdens and retire from the world. It invites the unfortunate, on whom the sun of life. never sent a ray of joy and happiness, to come, leaving all solicitude and every kind of painful anxiety behind. For the grave also is the house of God and the gate of Heaven; there we shall lie down and sleep in peace, for we know that those who die in the Lord are blessed.

Again: To the believer who reflects on the sepulchre of Christ, the grave is no longer the work-house of destruction, but the silent chamber in which a new life will develop itself. The germ of a new creation may be discovered in the midst of destruction. As soon as we become the prey of death, it may commence the work of dissolving our bodies: but we have a right to hope that all the parts will be re-united and that, in a glorified state, the same bodies will again be connected with our souls. For Christ rose from the dead and became the first fruits of them that sleep; and as all die in Adam, so all shall live in Christ. This raiment, which we shall have to hand over to the grave, will be restored to us again. For what is sown in dishonor, will be raised in glory; what is sown in weakness, will be raised in power; what is sown a natural body, will be raised a spiritual body. The body is the seed sown by the hand of the Lord, to germinate and ripen for eternity. Since Christ has burst the chains of death, it cannot retain us, but we shall come forth formed for heaven and fit to enter the perfect glory of the Father.

Now we say to him who stands at the grave of a friend and weeps, because he remembers with sadness the ashes which once enclosed the soul he loved: Go to the grave of the Saviour, meditate on what IIe has done for you and dry your tears. Honor the memory of the deceased, but no longer consider them dead. They live and the connection between them and ourselves is not destroyed. They are citizens of the city

of God to which we also belong by faith, and which we hope to enter in the hour of death, when we shall meet them again. Having stood at the graves of our friends and remembered them with sadness, we ought to leave them strengthened in faith and rejoicing in hope.

Different, however, very different is the condition of those who have not embraced the Saviour. His grave exists for them as well as for us; they see the stone rolled off as well as we -but the stone of sin still rests on their hearts, and though they can see the entrance to the grave, they cannot see an egress from it. When in the hour of death the face grows pale, when the blood begins to circulate but slowly and the heart to beat irregularly, when their eyes grow dim and darkness surrounds. them, then it will be in vain for them to exclaim with the great poet in the struggle of death: More light! more light! They must go, and they will go in despair. They must go to meet a Judge and they will be without hope or consolation. The grave yawns to receive them, an eternity awaits them, but what it will be to them they cannot know.

May Christ call each one of us by name, as he did Mary. In regard to every one of us, may He speak as he did at the grave of Lazarus: Take away the stone. May the stone of sin be removed from the hearts of all, so that all of us may believe in Christ and have everlasting life through Him. Amen.

ART. IV. DR. MURDOCK ON RAUCH'S PSYCHOLOGY.

IN a little work by James Murdock, D. D., entitled Sketches of Modern Philosophy especially among the Germans and published in 1842, the author concludes a review of Rauch's Psychology in the following language: "In his Preface, p. 4, Dr. Rauch tells us that one great object which he aimed