His noblest workmanship; converting the fairest
province of His creation into one vast _Necropolis_,--one dismal "city
of the dead!" The body of man, "so fearfully and wonderfully made," and
on which he had originally placed His own impress of "very good,"
_ruined_, and resolved into a mass of humiliating dust! If the Architect
mourns over the destruction of some favourite edifice which the storm
has swept down, or the fire has wrapt in conflagration and reduced to
ashes--if the Sculptor mourns to see his breathing marble with one rude
stroke hurled to the ground, and its fragments scattered at his
feet--what must have been the sensations of the mighty Architect of the
human frame, at whose completion the morning stars and the sons of God
chanted a loud anthem--what must have been His sensations as He thought
of them, now a devastated wreck, mouldering in dissolution and decay,
the King of Terrors sitting in regal state, holding his high holiday
over a vassal world!

In Bethany He beheld only a few of these broken and prostrate columns,
but they were powerfully suggestive of millions on millions which were
yet in coming ages to undergo the same doom of mortality.

If even our less sensitive hearts may be wrung with emotion at the
tidings of some mournful catastrophe that occupies, after all, but some
passing hour in the world's history, but which has carried death and
lamentation into many households--the sudden pestilence that has swept
down its thousands--the gallant vessel that was a moment before
spreading proudly its white wings to the gale, the joyous hearts on
board dreaming of hearth and home, and the "many ports that would exult
in the gleam of her mast"--the next! hurrying down to the depths of an
ocean grave, with no survivor to tell the tale!--or the terrible
records of War--the ranks of bold and brave laid low in the carnage of
battle--youth and strength and beauty and rank and friendship blent in
one red burial!--if these and such like mournful tales of death, and the
power of death, affect at the moment even the most callous amongst us,
causing the lip to grow pale, and demanding the tribute of more than a
tear, oh! what must it have been to the omniscient eye and exquisitely
sensitive spirit of Jesus, as, taking in all time at a glance, He beheld
the Pale Horse with its ghastly rider trampling under foot the vast
human family; converting the globe in which they dwelt into a mournful
valley of vision, f