towering above it great glittering walls of cold waters, that becalmed it in a sheltered vale from the hurricane that raved above, flinging arches of writhing waters across from billow to billow overhead, threatening to close, as in a transparent tomb, the yet living boat. At length, as it rose once more, unwilling, to the awful ridge that hung above it, jagged as with the teeth of furies, and white with rage, a yet fiercer blast tore it from the top of the wave, and flung it upside down on the crest of the preceding billow. The dreamer found himself choking in the waters, and soon lost all consciousness of the buffeting waves, or the shrieking and piercing winds. When the dream again awoke within and around him, he was aware that he was carried along through the storm above the waves; for they reached him only in bursts of spray, while the wind raged around him more fiercely than ever. He opened his eyes and looked downwards. Beneath him seethed, and boiled, and foamed the tumultuous and countless billows, uplifting their wreathy tops to be dashed about in spray, and shot in long vanishing sheets of foam over the distracted wilderness. Such was the turmoil beneath, that he could not tell by the space below whether he was only suspended over the abyss, or borne onwards through the chaotic uproar. But when he closed his eyes he felt that he was moving onwards. Again he opened them, and looked upwards. A shadowy face bent down over him, whence love unutterable was falling upon him in floods from eyes deep, and dark, and still, as the heavens that are above the clouds. Great waves of hair streamed back from the noble head, and floated and fluttered in the tides of the tempest. The face was like his mother's and like his father's, and like a face that he had seen somewhere in a picture, but far more beautiful and strong, and loving than all. With a sudden glory of gladness, in which the spouting pinnacles of the fathomless pyramids of wandering waters dwindled into the confusion of a few troubled water-drops, he knew, he knew that the Lord was carrying his lamb in his bosom. Around him were the everlasting arms, and above him the lamps that light heaven and earth, the eyes that watch and are not weary. Now he felt the arms in which he lay, and he nestled close to that true, wise bosom, which has room in it for all, and where none will strive. Over the waters went the Master, now crossing the calm hollows, now climbing the rising wave, now shrouded in the upper ocean of drifting spray, that flew scattered from the unstable summits, and wrapped him around in its whirling force, and anon calmly descending the gliding slope into the glassy trough below. Sometimes, when he looked up, the dreamer could see nothing but the clouds driving across the heavens, whence now and then a star, in a little well of blue, looked down upon him; but anon he knew that the driving clouds, were his drifting hair, and the stars in the blue wells of heaven were his love-lighted eyes. Over the sea he strode, and the floods lifted up their heads in vain. Sometimes the billows seemed to conspire to overwhelm them, and gathered and burst all around and over them; but in a few moments the billows were once more beneath his feet, and they went on safe and sure for some stable shore. Long time the

journey endured. The boy seemed to have slept, and again awaked in his dream; for he lay in a nest of soft grass on a mountain-side, and the form of a mighty man lay outstretched beside him, as if weary with a great weariness. Below, the sea howled and beat against the very base of the mountain on which they lay; but it was far below, and the sound reached them only like a faint and despairing moan. Again the Lord arose, and lifted him up and bore him onwards. Over the mountain-top they went, through the keen, cold air, and through the fields of snow and ice. On the very peak he paused and looked down. In a vast amphitheatre below, shining with light beyond the brightest sunlight, was gathered a multitude of beings crowding on all sides beyond the reach of the eye, rising up the slopes of the surrounding mountains, till they could not be distinguished from the surface, grouped and massed upon height above height, filling the hollows and little plains and little platforms all about. But every eye looked towards the lowest centre of the mountain-amphitheatre, where a little vacant space seemed to await the presence of some form, which should be the heart of all the throng. Down towards this centre the Lord bore him. Entering the sacred circle, he set him gently down, and then looked all around, as if searching earnestly for some one he could

not see.

Not finding whom he sought, he walked across to the other side of the open circle. A path was instantly divided for him through the dense multitude. Through the lane of men and women and children he went; and Herbert ran, following close at his feet; for now all the universe seemed empty save where he was. And he was not rebuked, but suffered to follow; and although the Lord walked fast and far, the little feet following him grew not weary, but grew in speed and power. Through the great crowd and beyond it, never looking back, up and over the brow of a mountain they went, and descended into a pale night, leaving behind them all the gathered universe of men. Hither and thither went the Master, searching up and down the gloomy valley; now looking behind a great rock, and now through a thicket of brushwood; now entering a dark cave, and now ascending a height and gazing all around; till at last, on a bare plain, seated on a grey stone, with her hands in her lap, they found the little orphan child who called the sea her mother. As he drew near, the Lord called out, My poor little lamb, I have found you at last. But she did not seem to hear or understand what he said; for she fell on her knees, and held up her clasped hands, and cried, 'Do not be angry with me. I am a goat, and I ran away because I was afraid. Do not burn me.' But all the answer the Lord made was to stoop and lift her and hold her to his breast, and she was an orphan no more. So he turned and went back over hill and over dale, and Herbert followed, rejoicing that the lost lamb was found. As he followed, lo, in a crevice of a rock, close by his path, bloomed a lovely primrose. He stopped, and plucked it. But ere he resumed his following, a cock crew shrill and loud, and he thought it was the cock that rebuked Peter, and he trembled and looked up the Master had vanished. He, too, fell a weeping

bitterly; and again the cock crew, and he opened his eyes, and knew that he had dreamed. His mother stood by his bedside, comforting the weeper with kisses; and he said to her, not yet quite awake, 'Oh, mother, surely he would not come over the sea to find me in the terrible storm, and then leave me because I stopped to pluck a flower!'

A Sunday Morning's Musings.

'JESUS said unto her, "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father; and to my God and to your God.'

As I read these words once and again, many, I hope good and helping, thoughts came to me. Not learned thoughts, for I was then rather desponding, and had been in perplexity, and I find in trouble that I want something more than what Jeremy Taylor appropriately calls the filthy stench of old and new heresies, or 'those deep disputings which yield but shallow comforts.'

Yes, these apostles, and Mary, and all the rest of the disciples, were in trouble about Christ; they knew he was gone from them, and they thought of him only as a mangled corpse in Joseph's tomb, and although it was 'the third day,' the idea of Christ's resurrection had not so penetrated their souls as to give them any real and living hope that they would ever see him again. No; he, their loved and living Lord, was gone; and, as they thought, gone for ever. So in their own truthful simplicity (for there is very little appearance of myth or oriental extravagance in this singularly unadorned story of the first self-resurrection the world had ever seen), they tell us they went to the sepulchre with the spices they had prepared to embalm the dead body of their departed friend. On their way the women talked, naturally enough, one to another of the difficulty they would have in removing the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre; the sun had just risen as they reached the garden where he had made his grave with the rich in his death,' and to their dismay they saw that the stone was already rolled away; and, going nearer, and with the brave hearts of true women, looking in to that half-lighted chamber of death, they saw no Christ there. To their poor affrighted minds it would have been a world of consolation just then to have seen the dead body of their Lord lying there waiting for their anointing, instead of which the dim. light only showed them an empty tomb, and the linen clothes lying, and the napkin that was about his head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.' No wonder they were much perplexed thereabout.' There was no poetry in their trouble just then; it was very real and deep! they have taken away the Lord, and they knew not where they had laid him.' But this trouble would have become a holy joy if they had but remembered the words

their dear friend, who had never deceived them, had so often uttered: 'But as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.' And so have I to-day, and yesterday, and other days, been making my dark cloud darker, and my burden heavier, because I have forgotten the Scripture;' I have overlooked or disbelieved my Father's word; so 'foolish have I been and ignorant' before God.

6

Peter and John also came early, though not so early as the women, to the sepulchre; and they, bolder than the women, as men ought to be, go into the sepulchre, and search it through and through, but they find no Christ there, for the Lord was risen indeed.' And then the men return home. We know why; evidently they were disheartened and impatient; evidently they had lost all hope for the time, and are going home sad and disconsolate; in that state of mind that dear old Henry Vaughan speaks of in his 'Silex Scintillans :'

'He that hath found some fledg'd bird's-nest may know

At first sight if the bird be flown;

But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.'

But Mary remained; remained alone; remained to think; remained to weep! last at the cross, and first at the sepulchre.' And as she stood absorbed and silent, the very Lord she loved much, because he had forgiven her much, appeared and spoke to her; but her heart was too sad to listen to any one, and 'her eyes were holden,' and she knew him not. But presently he said to her, 'Mary! and the well-known accents unlocked the hidden treasures of her heart, and, prompt to act as she was quick to feel, she would have fallen and kissed those feet which once she had washed with her tears and wiped with the hair of her head, when our Lord said, 'Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father,' &c.

There is much in these words that may profit me this Sunday morning. Already I have heard my Master saying, 'Come ye here apart and rest awhile,' and I and others, weary like myself, have left the hot and dusty road of life to sit in green pastures' by 'still waters,' while he speaks to us from these words first spoken to Mary, and now spoken to us.

6

'It is expedient for you,' said Christ to the eleven-for Judas was gone then that I go away. They only knew Christ after the flesh; yes, not only up to the time of his resurrection, but even up to the day of his ascension their knowledge was such, and such only; and I cannot help thinking that the angels meant irony and an implied censure of Jewish countrymen when they said to them, 'Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?'

And so, at present, Mary knew Christ; he was not lifted up in her heart beyond the idea of being her dearest and kindest earthly friend, who was and ever would be entwined about her tenderest and most womanly associations. And as she was about to prostrate herself before a visible Christ, whose body she now saw again, he, her Lord, said, Touch me not; do not cling to this outward manifestation of

myself; this is but the earthly appearance in a body; I shall soon be exalted to heavenly glory, and then when you truly know me you may worship me, but not now; you would only be worshipping me as your risen friend, as a man, and this would be carnal. Presently I shall ascend to my Father and my God; I will then send you the Comforter, who will reveal me to you as the eternal Son of my Father; yes, and your Father too; but now touch me not, worship me not. You might think it an appropriate expression of homage, but if I accepted it, I should strengthen an erring heart, deepen a false impression; and men might think hereafter that unless they could see me, and touch me, and hear my voice, there was no acceptable method of acknowledging me as their Lord and their God.'

These thoughts I had one quiet Sunday morning. All was still around me, and I sat and thought. My own inconstancies and follies came crowding upon me; my sometimes weak resolutions and strong prejudices; my severe judgments of others and my lenient opinions of myself; my shortcomings and indiscretions, and a thousand other things came back to my recollection, and I bent my knees in prayer, and confessed that I had been all this, and worse than this, because I had too much known Christ after the flesh, and henceforth I resolved to know him so no more. Yea more, and I again repeated another favourite verse of old Vaughan:

'I would I were a stone, or tree,

Or flowre by pedigree;

Or some poor high-way herb, or spring
To flow, or bird to sing!

Then should I, tied to one sure state,

All day expect my date.

But I am sadly loose, and stray,
A giddy blast each way;
O let one not thus range;
Thou canst not change.'

My musing finished thus-I do not know whether I shall help you, unknown readers, by thus revealing myself; but I will briefly jot down these two thoughts:

First, I thought kindly and Christianly of the many thousands whose earnestness and devotion are unquestionable, who kiss the crucifix and cross themselves at a picture, and reflected how many tender and loving hearts there were amongst them; hearts akin to Mary's when she was about to fall at our Saviour's feet and worship there. It certainly is carnal, external worship; the homage too often of the senses; but I believe they will hereafter attain to higher and nobler views of Christ, and will, with Peter and John, and Paul and Mary, and I hope myself, see no more as in a glass darkly, but face to face. So I will not condemn or curse all Roman Catholics, from whom subtle priests and old traditions have stolen the word of God; but will think of them as fellow-Christians, and pray for them as companions in life's tribulation.

And then I thought,

Well, what in the world will the Millenarians make of this passage?