there. How disgusting! But our dogs will be let out of the kennel very soon, and will clear him out." Yes, they bound towards him. "Take hold of him!" cries the rich man from the balustrade. The dogs go at the beggar with terrible bark ; then take lower growling; then stop to yawn; and at the coaxing tone of the poor wretch, they frisk about him, and put their soft, healing tongues to his ulcers, driving off the flies, and relieving the insufferable itch and sting of wounds which could not afford salve or bandage. Lazarus has friends at last. They will for awhile keep off the insults of the street, and defend their patient. That man is far from friendless who has a good dog to stand by him. Dogs are often not as mean as their masters. They will not be allowed to enter heaven, but may they not be allowed to lie down at the gate? for John says of the door of heaven, "Without are dogs. But what is the

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matter with the beggar? He lies over now with his face exposed to the sun. Lazarus, get up! He responds not. Poor fellow, he is dead. Two men appointed of the town come to carry him out to the fields. They dig a hole, drop him in, and cover him up. The people say, One more nuisance got rid of!" Aha! that is not Lazarus that they buried. It was only his sores. Yonder goes Lazarus, an angel on his right hand, an angel on the left, carrying him up the steep of heaven--talking, praising, rejoicing. Good old Abraham stands at the gate, and throws his arms around the new-comer. Now Lazarus has his own fine house, and his own robes and his own banquet, and his own chariot, and that poor sickly carcase of his that the overseers of the town dumped in the potter's field will come up at the call of the archangel, straight, and pure, and healthy, corrup tion having become incorruption.

DEATH OF THE RICH MAN.
BY DR. TALMAGE,

[With great care, earnestly.]

The lord of the palace has been receiving visitors to-day as the door-keeper introduced them. Soon another visitor comes who waits not for the porter to open the gate, or for the door-keeper to introduce him. Who is he? Stop him at the door. How dare he come in unheralded. Irresistibly he walks into the room, and the lord cries, with terror-struck face, "This is Death! Away with him!" Physicians' skill is useless! There is a hard thump on the floor. Is it a pitcher which has fallen, or an ottoman which has upset? No. Poor Dives has fallen. Dives is dead.

The excitement in town is great. The grooms rush from the

barn to see. All the great folks of the neighbourhood who used to sit at his dinners come in. The grocer from whom he got his spices, the butcher from whom he got the meat, and the clothier from whom he got the garments, come to find out all

about it.

The burial has arrived. He is carried down out of his splendid room, and through the porch into the street. The undertaker will make a big job of it, for there is plenty to pay. There will be high eulogies of him pronounced, although the text represents him as chiefly distinguished for his enormous appetite and his fine shirt.

The long procession moves on, amid the accustomed weeping and howling of Oriental obsequies, The sepulchre is reached. Six persons carrying the body go carefully down the steps leading to the door of the dead. The weight of the body on those ahead is heavy, and they hold back. The relics are left in the sepulchre, and the people return. But Dives is not buried there. That which is buried is only the shell in which he lived. Dives is down yonder in a deeper grave. He who had all the wine he could drink, asks for a plainer beverage. He wants water. He does not ask for a cupful, or a teaspoonful, but "just one drop," and he cannot get it. He looks up and sees Lazarus, the very man whom he set his dogs on, and wants him to put his finger in water, and let him lick it off. Once Lazarus wanted just the crumbs from Dives' feast; now Dives wants just a drop from Lazarus' banquet. Poor as poor can be. He has eaten the last quail's wing. He has broken the rind of the last pomegranate. Dives the lord has become Dives the pauper. The dogs of remorse and despair come not with healing tongue to lick, but with relentless muzzle to tear. Now Dives sits at the gate in everlasting beggary, while Lazarus, amid the festivities of heaven, fares sumptuously every day. You see this parable takes in the distant future, and speaks as though the resurrection were passed, and the body of Lazarus had already joined his spirit, and so I treat it.

ARE WE ALMOST THERE?

[Earnestly and with pathos.]

"Are we almost there-are we almost there?"
Said a dying girl as she drew near home;
"Are those our poplar trees which rear

Their forms so high 'gainst the heaven's blue dome?"
Then she talked of her flowers, and thought of the well
Where the cool water splash'd o'er the large white stone,
And she thought it would soothe like a fairy spell,

Could she drink from that fount when the fever was on.

While yet so young, and her bloom grew less,
They had borne her away to a kindlier clime-
For she would not tell, that 'twas only distress
Which had gather'd life's rose in its sweet spring time.
And she had look'd where they bade her to look,
At many a ruin and many a shrine -
At the sculptur'd niche, and the pictured nook,
And view'd from high places the sun's decline.
But in secret she sigh'd for a quiet spot,
Where she oft had play'd in childhood's hour:
Though shrub or flow'ret mark'd it not,
'Twas dearer to her than the gayest bower.

And oft did she ask, "Are we almost there?"
But her voice grew faint and her flush'd cheek pale !
And they strove to soothe her, with useless care,
So her sighs would escape on the evening gale.

Then swiftly, more swiftly, they hurried her on ;
But anxious hearts felt a chill despair;

For when the light of that eye was gone,

And the quick pulse stopp'd, SHE WAS ALMOST THERE.

THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS.

BY LONGFELLOW.

[Earnestly]

There is a reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,

He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.

"Shall I have nought that is fair?" saith he,
"Have nought but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me
I will give them all back again.”

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves,

It was for the Lord of Paradise

He bound them in his sheaves.

"My Lord hath need of these flowerets gay,"

The reaper said, and smiled?

"Dear tokens of the earth are they,

Where he was once a child.

"THEY SHALL ALL BLOOM IN FIELDS OF LIGHT,
TRANSPLANTED BY MY CARE !

And saints, upon their garments white,
The sacred blossoms wear."

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;

She know she COULD FIND THEM ALL AGAIN,
IN THE FIELDS OF LIGHT ABOVE.

O not in cruelty, not in wrath,

The reaper came that day,

"TWAS AN ANGEL VISITED THE GREEN EARTH,
AND TOOK THE FLOWERS AWAY.

THE LAST VIEW OF PISGAH.
BY DEAN STANLEY.
[Earnest and serious.]

"His eye

The end was at last come. It might still have seemed that a triumphant close was in store for the aged Prophet. was not dim nor his natural force abated." He had led his people to victory against the Amorite kings; he might still be expected to lead them over into the land of Canaan. But so it was not to be. From the desert plains of Moab he went up to the same lofty range, whence Balaam had looked over the same prospect. The same, but seen with eyes how different! The view of Balaam has been long forgotten; but the view of Moses has become the proverbial view of all time. It was the peak dedicated to Nebo on which he stood. "He lifted up his eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward. Beneath him lay the tents of Israel ready for the march; and "over against" them, distinctly visible in its grove of palm trees, the stately Jericho, key of the Land of Promise. Beyond was spread out the whole range of the mountains of Palestine, in its fourfold masses; "all Gilead," with Hermon and Lebanon in the east and north; the hills of Galilee, overhanging the lake of Gennesareth; the wide opening where lay the plain of Esdraelon, the future battle-field of the nations; the rounded summits of Ebal and Gerizim; immediately in front of him the hills of Judæa, and, amidst them, seen distinctly through the rents in their rocky walls, Bethlehem on its narrow ridge, and the invincible fortress of Jebus. To him, so far as we know, the charm of that view-pronounced by the few modern travellers who have seen it to be unequalled of its kind-lay in the assurance that this was the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and to their seed; the inheritance-with all its

varied features of rock and pasture, and forest and desert-for the sake of which he had borne so many years of toil and danger, in the midst of which the fortunes of his people would be unfolded worthily of that great beginning. To us, as we place ourselves by his side, the view swells into colossal proportions, as we think how the proud city of palm trees is to fall before the hosts of Israel; how the spear of Joshua is to be planted on height after height of those hostile mountains; what series of events, wonderful beyond any that had been witnessed in Egypt or in Sinai, would in after ages be enacted on the narrow crest of Bethlehem, in the deep basin of the Galilean lake, beneath the walls of "Jebus which is Jerusalem."

All this he saw. He "saw it with his eyes, but he was not to go over thither." It was his last view. From that height he came down no more. Jewish, Mussulman, and Christian traditions crowd in to fill up the blank. "Amidst the tears of the people, the women beating their breasts, and the children giving way to uncontrolled wailing, he withdrew. At a certain point in his ascent he made a sign to the weeping multitude to advance no further, taking with him only the elders, the high priest Eliezer, and the general Joshua. At the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as he was embracing Eliezer and Joshua, and still speaking to them, a cloud suddenly stood over him, and he vanished in a deep valley." So spoke the tradition as preserved in the language, here unusually pathetic, of Josephus. Other wilder stories told of the Divine kiss which drew forth his expiring spirit; others of the "Ascension of Moses," amidst the contention of good and evil spirits over his body. The Mussulmans, regardless of the actual scene of his death, have raised to him a tomb on the western side of the Jordan, frequented by thousands of the Mussulman devotees. But the silence of the Sacred narrative refuses to be broken, "In that strange land, the land of Moab, Moses, the servant of the Lord, died according to the word of the Lord." "He buried him in 'a ravine,' in the land of Moab, over against the idol temple of Peor." Apart from his countrymen, honoured by no funeral obsequies, visited by no grateful pilgrimages, "no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."

ONE YEAR AGO.

By C. C. Cox.

[Earnest and serious.]

What stars have faded from our sky!

What hopes unfolded but to die!
What dreams so fondly pondered o'er,

For ever lost the hues they wore !