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part that shall not be taken away from her.'" Again these two sisters are mentioned more particularly in the account of the raising of Lazarus. They are introduced once more in the next chapter of John, where we are told that Mary came and poured very precious ointment upon Jesus, while he sat at meat.

Now, there is no attempt to describe the distinctive qualities of these two individuals. They occupy only a small place in the scene. They appear before us but for a moment at a time, and they say and do but little. And yet they stand out with wonderful distinctness. Their images are not blended and intermixed. Their characteristic features are unveiled in the most incidental manner-by a word; a breath lifts the veil, and their faces once seen are never to be confounded.

From the first notice of them we gather that Martha was possessed of an active, matter-of-fact temperament, and that if not by age, by right of her peculiar character, she took the lead in household concerns. She set herself immediately at work to provide an ample entertainment for her beloved guest, and had so little sympathy with Mary, so imperfect an appreciation of the real greatness of Jesus, so little of the sensibility which was so promiment in her sister, that she complained of Mary, and invoked the authority of Jesus, to obtain her sister's aid in her domestic labours. I pray the reader, now, to mark the beautiful correspondence of the other notices of the sisters with their characters thus incidentally developed.

When, upon the death of Lazarus, their brother, Jesus approached Bethany, the village where they dwelt, and the rumour of his coming preceded him, it was Martha that first heard it, and went forth to meet him. Mary sat still in the house. Martha, we may suppose, was engaged in the active concerns of the household. How naturally the report of the approach of Jesus came to her ears first! Mary, with her greater tenderness of mind, was in a retired part of the house. The custom of the age and country allowed the afflicted to spend seven days in the indulgence of grief, and to receive visits of condolence. With the disposition of Mary this custom harmonized, and she naturally availed herself of it. On any other occasion-under any other circumstances, Mary, we may suppose, would have been the first to hasten to meet Jesus. As it was, Martha went first, because she first heard that he was coming. Mary went as soon as she was informed of his approach. If Mary had heard that Jesus was coming, before she learned it from Martha, then her friends from Jerusalem, who were with her, must have known it also, and they would have suspected whither she was going, and not have supposed that she was going to the grave to weep there.

And then how characteristic the manner in which the sisters meet their venerated Friend. They both addressed him in the same words, and the coincidence is very natural, because the thought which they expressed must have been continually uppermost in their minds. They

had perhaps said the same thing to each other and to themselves a thousand times. "If thou hadst been here, my brother had not died!"* But while Martha was able to enter into conversation with Jesus, unembarrassed by her feelings, Mary as soon as she saw him uttered a few words, and then fell at his feet in an agony of tears.

When he directed the stone to be removed from the mouth of the sepulchre, observe it is Martha, and not Mary, who interferes, questioning the propriety of the direction, and betraying the coarse turn of her mind; “Lord! by this time he is offensive, for he hath been dead four days!" Such a suggestion, we perceive, came naturally from her. Mary's reverence for Jesus was too profound to permit her to object to anything he might propose. While Martha, constitutionally incapable of as deep a feeling, presumed to speak as if he knew not what he was doing.

We have only one mention more of Mary and Martha. Shortly after Lazarus had been raised from the dead, Jesus again visited Bethany. 'Martha served. But Mary brought a quantity of costly ointment and poured it upon his person.'t By this act, she simply intended to express her personal reverence for Jesus. Ilow like her

*This coincidence is no slight evidence of the unsuspecting integrity of the narrator. If the story were fictitious, its author would scarcely have ventured, without some explanation, to put the same words into the mouths of the sisters, as it would certainly appear at first sight to want verisimilitude.

+ See Chap. X.

self is the attitude in which she is here represented! Perfumes and ointments formed a part of the offices of hospitality. But the use of an ointment so precious was a mark of extraordinary respect, and showed how deeply Mary reverenced Jesus.

Let the incidents just briefly specified be pondered well. Mark their exceeding brevity, and the accidental manner in which they are introduced. And yet how clear are the impressions we receive from them of the characters of the two sisters. Two or three-and as to any design on the part of the narrators,-random strokes, and the moral features of Martha and Mary are before us in all the freshness of nature. The outlines are complete, never running into each other, and formed not purposely, but by the combination of a few brief incidents. Let those believe who can, that the circumstances related from which we have this result, are matters of fiction and not of fact.

It will help us to estimate the characteristic of the New Testament histories, which I am now illustrating, to glance at the works of imagination abounding at the present day, and observe how striking is the contrast between them, and the writings under consideration, in this respect. There is no department of Literature in which human genius is so active and triumphant, as in the composition of fictitious narratives. Within a few years, through an alliance with history, an extraordinary revolution has been produced in this class

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of writings. The novelist nowadays prepares himself for his work by the acquisition of an extensive and familiar acquaintance with the customs, the opinions, the whole condition of the period at which he lays the scene of his story, and is thus enabled to throw over it an imposing air of truth. And yet, after all, how much pains do the most gifted,-does the great Northern Story-teller himself, take to impart to his readers distinct and consistent impressions of the characters in which he aims to awaken interest! How continually are we made to feel that incidents are either fabricated or coloured in order to bring out character, or else, for the sake of the story, occurrences are introduced which violate the consistency of the characters portrayed. I am reminded in this connexion by the force of the contrast of the well-known romance of the Pirate.' If so familiar an illustration may be allowed, we have only to observe the care which the novelist has taken to discriminate the characters of Minna and Brenda, to perceive how immeasurably more striking is the brief scriptural representation of Mary and Martha. In the novel, everything is done to assist the conceptions of the reader by a minute personal description of the two heroines, and they are thrown into circumstances calculated to bring out their respective peculiarities in the most prominent manner. Whereas in those rapid sketches of the New Testament, the incidents which so consistently and admirably unfold the characters of Mary and Martha are told with the utmost brevity, and if for the sake of showing off any one, it is with a view