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our SAVIOUR loved St. John,-loved him more than He loved the rest of the Apostles, -is what the heart most clings to; the fact from which it derives most instruction. He was

deemed by the HOLY SPIRIT the fittest of the four Evangelists to transmit to unborn ages the discourses of Him who was, and is, Love itself. We know most of our SAVIOUR from the writings of that Apostle who, in the Days of His humiliation, knew that SAVIOUR best.

JESUS CHRIST is still present with us in His Word. By leaning upon that Word,—by gazing intently into it, and by humbly studying its perfections, above all by earnestly seeking to conform our lives to its Divine precepts, -we shall be most faithfully treading in the footsteps of the Apostle' whom JESUS loved.' Love, not only towards Man, but towards GOD, is the constant theme of St. John's writings. By this we know that we love the children of GoD,' (he writes,) 'when we love GOD, and keep His commandments.' Our love of GOD, you see, is thus made the very test of our love of our neighbour: our love of Man is made to depend upon our love of God. Above all, take notice that obedience is to be the proof of Love. No lip-service There must be a surrender

will GOD accept.

of the Will,-a sacrifice of the whole heart, of For this is the love of God,

the whole life.

that we keep His Commandments.' Then, gathering up the blessed experience of a very long and very holy life, St. John adds, mandments are not grievous.'

and His Com

The Innocents' Day.

DEATH OF LITTLE CHILDREN.

ST. MATTHEW ii. 18.

Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

THIS Festival is like no other, for it is kept in honour of little children. We call to mind today the fate of those infants of Bethlehem who fell victims to the cruelty of Herod in the year that CHRIST was born; and who thus, although they were too young to know it, proved the first of all His creatures to suffer for His sake. The Infant SAVIOUR must have infant Martyrs.

The events of this Day are written on the foremost page of the earliest Gospel, and are therefore familiar to all. Wise Men from the East, led by a wondrous Star to Jerusalem, inquire on their arrival for the newly-born King of the Jews. Herod refers the question to those most learned in the Hebrew Scriptures; who make answer that Bethlehem is pointed out in prophecy as the future birth-place of MESSIAH. Accordingly, the innocent babes of that small town and its

immediate neighbourhood are slain by a decree of the savage tyrant, in order to secure the destruction of the Holy Child JESUS. How, in the midst of this slaughter, GoD provided for the safety of the Holy Family, needs not now to be stated. That event belongs rather to the Epiphany season. Our present business is only to take notice how it fared with the Holy Innocents themselves.

The Evangelist St. Matthew having described this transaction, adds,- Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.' He informs us that the prophecy of Jeremiah, uttered 600 years before, besides its fulfilment in the days of the prophet when the descendants of Rachel were led captive past her tomb, (as related in the xlth chapter of Jeremiah), received a fresh completion now. The mother, bereaved in respect of her remote posterity, is described as sending up a cry of grief from the very chamber of death!

Nothing, it will be observed, is said of the grief of the actual Mothers of these little children. In Scripture, things are almost always

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set down in the fewest possible words. But then, if we pay attention, we shall often find that a great deal more is conveyed than at first we supposed. And this is remarkably the case here for the great mourning' of the Mother of the Tribe, (who,' weeping for her children would not be comforted,') may well stand for the grief of the bereaved Mothers themselves; as indeed it seems to describe it very affectingly and well. But when we turn to the place of prophecy from which these words are taken, great is our surprise and pleasure indeed; for the message of comfort which the prophet Jeremiah was instructed to convey to as many as mourned the departure of the Jewish captives for Babylon, is found to have reserved its full measure of consolation for a much later period,-even that which we are now considering. Thus saith the LORD; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the LORD; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the LORD, that thy children shall come again to their own border.' What more blissful promise could have been imagined, for sustaining the hopes of those afflicted ones

a Jer. xxxi. 16, 17.

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