find them again, like Memnon's statue, vocal in the rising sunshine of the heavens.

The brothers, so closely knit, so soon parted, so long separated, at last are reunited. Even to us here, with the chronology of earth still ours, the years between the early martyrdom of James and the death of the centenarian John seem but a span. The lapse of the centuries that have rolled away since then makes the difference of the dates of the two deaths seem very small, even to us. What a mere nothing it will have looked to them, joined together once more beford God!

IV. Lastly, James and James. In his hot youth, when he deserved the name of a son of thunder -so energetic, boisterous, destructive perhaps, he was he and his brother, and their foolish mother, whose name is kindly not told us, go to Christ and say, "Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy Kingdom.” That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of the headsman's sword.

Yes! And so our dreams are disappointed, and their disappointment is often the road to their fulfilment, for Jesus Christ was answering the prayer, "Grant that we may sit on Thy right hand in Thy Kingdom," when He called James to Himself, by the brief and bloody passage of martyrdom. James said, when he did not know what he meant-and the vow was noble though it was ignorant-"we can drink of the cup that Thou drinkest." And, all honour to him he stuck to his vow; and when the cup was proffered to him, he manfully, and like a Christian,

took it and drank it to the dregs; and, I suppose, went silently to his grave. But the change between his ardent anticipations and his calm resignation, and between his foolish dream and the stern reality, may well teach us that, whether our wishes be fulfilled or disappointed, they all need to be purified, and that the disappointment of them on earth is often God's way of fulfilling them for us in higher fashion than we dreamed or asked.

So, brethren, let us leave to Him for ourselves, and for all dear ones, that question of living or dying. Only let us be sure that, whether our lives be long like John's, or short like James's, "living or dying we are the Lord's." And then, whatever be the length of life or the manner of death, both will bring us the fulfilment of our highest wishes, and will lead us to His side, at whose right hand all those shall sit who have loved Him here, and, though long parted, shall be re-united in common enjoyment of the pleasures for evermore which bloom unfading there. And so shall we ever be with the Lord."

VII.

Wabose Image and Superscription ?

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'WHOSE image and superscription hath it?"-LUKE XX. 24.

T is no unusual thing for antagonists to join forces in order to crush a third person obnoxious to both. So in this incident we have an unnatural alliance of the two parties in Jewish politics who were at daggers drawn. The representatives of the narrow conservative Judaism, which loathed a foreign yoke, in the person of the Pharisees and Scribes, and the Herodians, the partizans of a foreigner, and a usurper, lay their heads together to propose a question to Christ which they think will discredit or destroy Him. They would have answered their own question in opposite ways. One would have said, "It is lawful to give tribute to Cæsar"; the other would have said, "It is not." But that is a small matter when malice prompts. They calculate, "If He says, No! we will denounce Him to Pilate as a rebel. If He says, Yes! we will go to the people and say, Here is a pretty Messiah for you, that has no objection to the foreign yoke. Either way we shall end Him."

Jesus Christ serenely walks through the cobwebs, and lays His hand upon the fact. Let Me see a silver penny!"-which, by-the-bye, was the amount of the tribute" Whose head is that?" The currency of the country proclaims the monarch of the country. To stamp his image on the coin is an act of sovereignty. "Cæsar's head declares that you are Cæsar's subjects, whether you like it or not, and it is too late to ask questions about tribute when you pay your bills in his money." "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's."

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Does not the other side of Christ's answerGod the things that are God's "-rest upon a similar fact? Does not the parallelism require that we should suppose that the destiny of things to be devoted to God is stamped upon them, whatever they are, at least as plainly as the right of Cæsar to exact tribute was inferred from the fact that his money was the currency of the country? The thought widens out in a great many directions, but I purpose to confine it to one special line of contemplation now, and to take it as suggesting to each of us this great truth, that the very make of men shows that they belong to God, and are bound to yield themselves to Him. If the answer to the question was plain, and the conclusion irresistible, about the penny with the image of Tiberius, the answer is no less plain, nor the conclusion less irresistible, when we turn the interrogation within, and, looking at our own being, say to ourselves, "Whose image and superscription hath it?"

I.—First, then, note the image stamped upon man, and the consequent obligation,

We can very often tell what a thing is for by noticing its make. The instructed eye of an anatomist will, from a bone, divine the sphere in which the creature to whom it belonged was intended to live. Just as plainly as gills or lungs, fins, wings, or legs and arms, declare the element in which the creature that possesses them is intended to move, so plainly do our spirits show that God is our Lord since we are made in a true sense in His image, and therefore only in Him can we find rest.

I need not remind you, I suppose, of the old word, "Let us make man in our own image." Nor need I, I suppose, insist at any length upon the truth that though, by the fact of man's sin, the whole glory and splendour of the Divine image in which he was made are marred and defaced, there still remain such solemn, blessed, and awful resemblances between man and God that there can be no mistake as to which beings in the universe are the most kindred; nor any misunderstanding as to Who it is after whose likeness we are formed, and in Whose love and life alone we can be blessed.

I am not going to weary you with thoughts for which, perhaps, the pulpit is not the proper place; but let me just remind you of one or two points. Is there any other being on this earth that can say of itself "I am"? God says I am that I am." You and I cannot say that, but we alone, in this order of things, possess that solemn and awful gift, the consciousness of personal being. And, brethren, whoever is able to say to himself "I am" will never know rest until he can turn to God and say "Thou art," and then, laying his hand in the Great Father's