buried generation;--"alone! you will yet be _not_ alone!"--lifting
your furrowed brow and tearful eye to Heaven, you may exclaim, "Who
shall separate me from the love of Christ?"

XVIII.

PALM BRANCHES.

We have just been contemplating a beautiful episode in the Bethany
Memories--a gleam amid gathering clouds. _Martha_, _Mary_, and
_Lazarus_! With what happy hearts did they hail the presence of their
Lord on the evening of that Jewish Sabbath! Little did they anticipate
the events impending. Little did they dream that their Almighty
Deliverer and Friend would that day week be sleeping in His own grave!

These were indeed eventful hours on which they had now entered. The stir
through Palestine of the thousands congregating in the earthly Jerusalem
to the great Paschal Feast, was but a feeble type of the profound
interest with which myriad angel-worshippers in the Jerusalem above were
gathering to witness the offering of the True Paschal Sacrifice, "the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

On the morning after the supper at Bethany (probably that of our
Sabbath), the Saviour rose from His couch of needed rest to approach
Jerusalem. The reserve hitherto maintained as to His kingly power is now
to be set aside. "The hour is come in which the Son of man is to be
glorified." BETHANY is one of the few places associated with
recollections of the Redeemer's royalty. The "despised and rejected" is,
for once, the honoured and exalted. It is a glimpse of the crown before
He ascends the cross; a foreshadowing of that blessed period when He
shall be hailed by the loud acclaim of earth's nations--the Gentile
hosannah mingling with the Hebrew hallelujah in welcoming Him to the
throne of universal empire.

Multitudes of the assembled pilgrims in the city, who had heard of His
arrival, crowded out to Bethany to witness the mysterious Being, whose
deeds of mercy and miracle had now become the universal theme of
converse. His mightiest prodigy of power in the resurrection of Lazarus
had invested His name and person with surpassing interest. We need not
wonder, therefore, that "the town of Mary and her sister Martha" should
attract many worshippers from Jerusalem, to behold with their own eyes
at once the restored villager and his Divine Deliverer! In fulfilment of
Zechariah's prophecy, the meek and lowly Nazarene, seated on no
caparisoned war-horse, but on an unbroken colt, and surrounded with the
multitude, sets f