with those nails! Be quick with that gall! Be quick with those spikes! for I see in the sorrow and the wrath of those disciples a storm brewing that will burst on the heads of those persecutors. To-day we come and we join the friendly crowd. Who wants to be on the wrong side? I can not bear to be in the unfriendly group. There is not a man or woman in this house who wants to be in the unfriendly group. I want to join the other group. We come while they are bewailing, and join their lamentations. We see that brow bruised; we hear that dying groan; and while the priests scoff and the devils rave and the lightnings of God's wrath are twisted into a wreath for that bloody mount, you and I will join the cry, the supplication, of the penitent malefactor, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." Oh! the pain, the ignominy, the ghastliness, the agony! and yet the joy, the thrilling, bounding, glorious hope! Son of Mary! Son of God! Is there one here who will reject this atonement made for the people-not for one man here and one man there, but for all who will accept it? There was a very touching scene among an Indian tribe in the last century. It seemed that one of the chieftains had slain a man belonging to an opposite tribe, and that tribe came up, and said, "We will exterminate. you, unless you surrender the man who committed that crime." The chieftain who did the crime stepped out from the ranks, and said, "I am not afraid to die; but I have a wife and four children, and I have a father aged, and a mother aged, whom I support by hunting, and I sorrow to leave them helpless." Just as he said that, his old father from behind stepped out, and said, "He shall not die. I take his place. I am old and well stricken in years. I can do no good. I might as well die. My days are almost over. He can not be spared. Take me." And they accepted the sacrifice. Wonderful sacrifice, you say; but not so wonderful as that found in the Gospel; for we deserved to die, ay, we were sentenced, when Christ, not worn out with years, but in the flush of his youth, said, "Save that man from going down to the pit. I am the ransom! Put his burdens on my shoulders. Let his stripes fall on my back. Take my heart for his heart. Let me die, that he may live." Shall it be told to-day in heaven that, notwithstanding all those wounds, and all that blood, and all those tears, and all that agony, you would not accept him? "Well might the sun in darkness hide And shut his glories in, When Christ, the mighty maker, died "Thus might I hide my blushing face "But drops of grief can ne'er repay Here, Lord, I give myself away, "Tis all that I can do." O Lord Jesus, we accept thee! We all accept thee now. There is no hand in all this audience lifted to smite thee on the cheek now. No one will spear thee now. No one will strike thee now. Come in, Lord Jesus! Come Quickly! 12 DROWNED IN THE LAKE. "The deep that coucheth beneath."-Deuteronomy xxxiii., 13. WITZERLAND has the glaciers of Mont Blanc as a SWI crown for her brow, and Lake Geneva for an emerald on her right hand. In the Swiss railway we were told that we must look out for the bridge where, as he emerges, there suddenly dashes upon the eye of the traveler one of the most extraordinary scenes of beauty and grandeur in all Europe. In the twinkling of an eye appears Lausanne, seated on her throne of three hills, with twenty-one thousand population; her cathedral, nine hundred years old, with apsed chapels and Byzantine capitals; her museums, distinguished the world over for the finest specimens in minerals, and animals, and shell-fish; her terraces and gardens, bewitching with aroma and luxuriance; her schools, which, by the rarest opportunity for culture, invite the youth of America and of all the world; Lake Geneva, deep, yet the clearest of waters, traversed by steamers crowded with passengers from all lands, and fishing-smacks here and there hauling out trout, and pike, and perch, and salmon; and sail-boats going out from the castles on the beach occupied by gentlemen of fortune. This sheet of water, skirted by mountains, Jura and the Alps, some green with verdure, some white with snow, some cleft with streams, crystalline and arrowy, the chalices of the floods. emptying into this great bowl of the mountain. On the banks of this lake Gibbon, Rousseau, and Voltaire studied, and Byron dramatized, and John Kemble, the tragedian, lis buried, and Rothschild built his mansion, and ten thousand men and women, far better than any I have mentioned, have gone up and down, adoring the God who lifted the hills and sunk this great inland sea. May you all live to behold the Alps, cloud-turbaned, looking down into the mirror of beautiful Geneva! A few days ago, two lads of our own city, and much of the time of our own congregation, pushed out from Lausanne on those exquisite waters, on a pleasure excursion. It was in the leisure of school-hours. A sudden storm swept over the lake, capsizing that boat; or there was a defect in the vessel, and those precious lives were emptied into a watery grave. You say that they ought not to have gone where there was danger. I reply, where will you go and find no danger? You go down the street, a scaffold may fall on you. You go to the park, the horses may become unmanageable. You take the rail train, a switchman may turn the track the wrong way. You stay at home, the lightning may strike through the roof, or miasma may come in through the open window. Dangers stand round us everywhere to press us to the tomb. There is great health for a student in rowing with the oar, and great exhilaration in the spreading of the sail; but the lake that you stroke and fondle, thinking it harmless and asleep, sometimes proves treacherous to the yacht, and springs upon it like a panther, clutching it down with wrathful, overmastering strength. So that Moses, in the text, graphically and truthfully describes the fatal slyness of river and lake and sea when he says, "The deep that coucheth beneath." The particulars of that sad event have not yet come to us; but never, through the coral caves of the Atlantic, and amidst the gardens of sea-weed, and along by the hulks of the wrecked shipping, could a more fearful message travel the submarine cable than that which came last week announcing that John and James Crane, two American students at Lausanne, Switzerland, had ended their mortal life in Lake Geneva. Such a transition is the easiest and most painless of all modes of getting out of this life. After one minute of submergence, generally, consciousness is gone. The Navarino sponge-divers can not bear to stay under the water more than two minutes, notwithstanding all their experience; and yet persons who have been resuscitated tell us that the mind at such a time acts with wonderful velocity. And so I suppose these dear lads had time to think of home, and the sadness of the parental hearts whom they expected to join next October. God decreed otherwise, and may his omnipotent grace soothe the bereaved and the desolate. There is in this event that I am called to speak about to-night a new illustration of a very old lesson. You tell me nothing but a stereotyped thing when you tell me of life's uncertainty. I have heard that a thousand times from ministers and prayer-meeting talkers and Sabbathschool teachers; and when you make that announcement, I open my eyes no wider, nor does my heart beat quicker; but when you tell me that a boat flung two beloved lads into a watery grave, then I am stunned by the telegram, and compelled to read the truth written by pen of lightning stretched up from under the sea. How quickly our life comes, and how soon it goes! We pass along a perilous cliff, and we almost hold our breath, and balance ourself lest we fall off, and, getting beyond the pass, we thank |