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winds baffle our footsteps, and all things apparently conspire against our comfort and our safety; in such an hour of darkness and distress we need a shelter-superior to the elements, superior to all adverse influences, temporal and spiritual. A foundation for such a shelter God has provided and to that foundation, David, who foresaw the Lord always before his face, looked, when he said, “Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."

XIV.

The Widow of Pain.

Having ended his sayings in the audience of the people, Jesus entered into Capernaum. There was there a certain Centurion, of whom the elders of the Jews bore testimony that he was worthy, for he loved their nation, and had built for them a synagogue. Probably he was a half convert, or proselyte of the gate. His servant was sick, and ready to die, and the elders of the Jews added their entreaties to his, that Jesus would in this case exercise his power. The Redeemer saith, "I will come and heal him." And the centurion answered, "Lord, trouble not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof. But say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man under authority, having under me soldiers: and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth, and unto another, Come, and he cometh and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." It was as if he had said, if I, myself a subordinate, can command those beneath me, how much more canst thou, to whom all diseases are obedient, command that this my servant shall be made. whole. Jesus turned to the people that followed him, and said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” And he added the truth that the nations from afar shall sit

down in the kingdom, while the children, rejecting their Lord, are cast out. The centurion went his way, upon the Saviour's assurance, and found that his servant was healed in the self-same hour.

On the next day Jesus entered into the city of Nain. It was but a short distance from Capernaum; and the fame of the recent miracles of Jesus, and of his sermon on the mount, carried much people with him. When he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a dead man carried out; the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her. The miracles of our blessed Redeemer were not done in a corner. They were intended to cause an impression on many minds, and to exhibit the loving kindness of God to many witnesses. Thus we perceive a wise Providence in the mournful circumstances which accompanied the bereavement of the widow of Nain. Opportunity was thus accorded to much people to practice the graces and virtues, and to perform the offices of charity which Jesus came on earth to teach, by precept and by example. The great concourse which followed Jesus swelled the multitude, whom in whose sight he had determined to show that the Son of Man not only had power over disease, but over death and the grave. He would teach them the practical truth, which St. James,—remembering the widow of Nain, as he wrote-has expressed in his general epistle: "True religion, before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

And when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. Now hers were circumstances under which grief was not only natural and allowable, but, we may add, necessary and unavoidable. Deprived of the husband to whom, having trusted all to him, and merged her existence in his, she looked for support and comfort, her affections centred in her only son. As it appears from the narrative that he had reached to man's estate, the period had arrived when she had a right to count on a recompense for her labour in rearing him. The pains she had taken, in toil, in sorrow and in care, were now to be rewarded by an affectionate companion and assistant, sufficiently advanced to understand what had been done and suffered in his behalf. She had lost him her only son, and she a widow; and yet Jesus said unto her, Weep not.

Deep and fervent is the love of woman; deeper than any other, that which she feels for the child whom she has borne-whose life has been a part of hers-whose pulses have beaten in unison with her blood-whose heart moved with her heart, by the same mysterious agency—whose being she can never learn to separate from her own. The toilsome pleasure of directing the infant thought, and of teaching the infant hand its cunning, still farther cements the bond of affection, and strengthens the union of love. And as the little being, so guarded and cherished, grows in stature and in age, the mother feels a property in his possessions, and a reverse in his adversity. Is he prosperous? His successes are her honest pride. Is he

unfortunate? He seems yet dearer to her that he needs her sympathy, and that her good offices are still acknowledged. And beside the bed where he is extended in sickness and in pain, she is the never wearied, the ever patient watcher-proving amid her sorrow and her pity, that the strength of manhood has not raised him above her assistance. She is the last to admit that the aid of friends and the wisdom of the physician must be unavailing-the last to remit her care, the last to relinquish hope. When all is closed, and a mother's love even can no more deceive itself, her grief is as full of anguish as her care has been full of love; and the desolation of her heart none, save a mother bereft of her child, can know. If, like the widow of Nain, she has lost her only son, her husband dies again in him, and her desolation of heart is complete. Her neighbours and kinsmen in vain strive to soothe the wound, which He alone who made can heal.-The only son of the widow was borne without the gate

Close behind the bier,

Crumpling the pall up in her wither'd hands,
Follow'd the aged woman. Her short steps
Totter'd with weakness, and a broken moan
Fell from her lips, thicken'd convulsively,
As her heart bled afresh.-

Through sickness and mortality does God call those to himself, who might else live on in forgetfulness of Him. Every day are we warned by the visits of death, of its certainty. The mournful pageant winds through the

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