mitted unto Him."

Sad, indeed, for those who, when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such
"strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when
sorrow and bereavement overtake them--the lowering shadows of the dark
and cloudy day--have still to grope after an _unknown Christ_; and, amid
the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for
the first time, the _only_ true One.

Oh! if our hour of trial has not yet come, let us be prepared for
it--for come it will. Let us seek to have our vessels moored _now_ to
the Rock of Ages, that when the tempest arises--when the floods beat,
and the winds blow, and the wrecks of earthly joy are seen strewing the
waters--we may triumphantly utter the challenge, "Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ?"

"Say, ye who tempt
The sea of life, by summer gales impell'd,
Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will come
For storms to try you, and strong blasts to rend
Your painted sails, and shred your gold like chaff
O'er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man,
If sorrow find him unsustain'd by God!"

X.

THE MASTER.

Martha can withhold no longer from her sister the joyful tidings which
she has been the first to hear. With fleet foot she hastens back to the
house with the announcement, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee."
Mary hears, but makes no comment. Wrapt in the silence of her own
meditative grief, "when she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto
Him."

"To her all earth could render nothing back
Like that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stood
As marble statue.

In that maiden's breast
Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down,
Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint
Of common grief."

The formal sympathisers who gathered around her had observed her
departure. They are led to form their conjectures as to the cause of
this sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that
moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and
which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking
from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on
the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered,
and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at
once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen