WON AND SATISFIED. "What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard HIM and observed HIM." -HOSEA xiv. 8. OH, vainly I thirsted, and eagerly sought For some object for which I could live, And many were offered, and eagerly grasped Yet I thought if I only had this or had that. Oft I cbid these vain yearnings-why, why should I care? It was there that strange thirst for I could not tell what, My idols had failed to fill up the great void, I had drank-but my thirst was no less. Vain search for a bliss which the world could not bring: All had failed, I was helpless and weary-when lo! And a Voice, whose low sweetness took captive my heart, Oh, how swiftly my heart sprang to answer that voice, I have gazed on His face, I have basked in His smile; Of the heart He has deigned thus to woo for His own? O Master! my Master! Thou knowest my heart, Be the bliss of Thy tender embrace. Thy smile draws me captive-I gaze and adore; O Jesus! Lord Jesus! Thou callest me Thine, From the chains of the devil Thou settest me free, Oh sweet to be held in the arms of Thy love, Till I'm clasped to Thy heart in the mansions above! E. J. A. P. A GREAT CONTRAST. "Master, we would that Thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire," "Grant unto us that we may sit, one on Thy right hand, and the other on Thy left hand in Thy glory." "Not what I will, but what Thou wilt." "I am come to do Thy will, O God." "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." WHEN the blessed Son of God pledged Himself to the accomplishment of the will of God, He knew fully and perfectly what obedience to that will involved. But (wondrous mystery!) He was born into the world as an infant; not simply with the physical helplessness of a babe, but with a mind both capable of, and needing, development, so that it could be said of Him that He "increased in wisdom as well as in stature. And then with ripening knowledge there must have come to Him a growing sense of what He must endure in performing that work which He had undertaken. How the first sight of the altar and the sacrifice must have spoken to His tender heart! And how the first view of Israel's high priest in his robes of glory and beauty must have carried His thoughts forward to that blessed priesthood on which He would enter in the majesty of resurrection! Though He was born under no sentence of death, like the ordinary children of Adam, He well knew that death, even the death of atonement, would be the end of His earthly course, and that a blessed resurrection must quickly follow. That this was ever upon His heart is evident from many Scriptures, and that it weighed with increasing pressure upon His spirit as the time approached, is also apparent. Thus we read that as He was leading His disciples to Jerusalem for the last time, "Jesus went before them; and they were amazed; and as they followed they were afraid." (Mark x. 32.) There was something in His manner which they could not understand. He had twice, at least, told them of His approaching death, and, though they had not really taken in His words, they seem to have had some undefined dread upon their spirits, and even to have feared what the end would be. (See John xi. 8 16.) Now, for the third time, He calls the twelve aside and unfolds to them what is uppermost in His own mind. With great minuteness He foretells the various stages of the great transaction, placing the events in the exact order of occurrence. (Matt. xx. 17-19.) (1)-He would be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes. (2) They would condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles. (3) They (the Gentiles) would mock, and scourge, and crucify Him. (4)—The third day He would rise again. But as Luke tells us, "they understood none of these things; and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things that were spoken." Though the Lord was so explicit, they did not believe that He meant exactly what He said; they treated His words as they treated the prophecies of His humiliation, and as so many Christians now treat the prophecies of His kingdom and glory-they spiritualized them; that is, they explained them away. They took them as only figures of great conflicts out of which He would come victorious, and occupy that throne of which He had recently spoken, around which their thrones should be placed. (Matt. xix. 28.) What an intimation is given to us in all this of the absolute loneliness of the Lord Jesus! The great burden on His heart was shared by none of His disciples. Their eyes were upon the kingdom and the throne; His were upon the cross, with all its attendant sorrows, by which alone the kingdom could be reached and the throne established. But what He lacked in them He found in God; for He could always say, "He that sent Me is with Me; the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please Him." (John viii. 29.) This blessed path of obedience, sympathy, and fellowship is open to us also through His rich grace. An illustration of the ignorance and ambition of the disciples, though not unattended with the spirit of faith, is given in the narrative concerning James and John, which follows the Lord's prediction of His sufferings and death. (Matt. xx. 20–28; Mark x. 35-45.) Confident that the kingdom must come, whatever troubles might intervene, these two brethren approach the Lord, and, by the lips of their mother, make request that the two chief seats in that kingdom may be theirs. But Jesus answered and said, "Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" It is quite possible that they understood Him to refer to the sufferings He had just spoken of, but when they readily replied, "We are able," it might surely have been said again, "Ye know not what ye undertake." But the Lord knew that if they were ignorant, they were true, that they were willing to endure for His sake, and He accepted their willing mind, and promised them a share in His endurance. There was, indeed, a cup of which they could not drink, and a baptism which no creature could have endured. That cup He drank, and that baptism He passed through on behalf of His people. But in addition to His sin-bearing agony at the cross, He suffered constantly from the hand of man as God's righteous servant and witness in the earth. And of these sufferings, which culminated at Calvary, it is the privilege of His people to know the fellowship. This privilege He promises to the favoured two, and we are told how it was granted unto them. James was the first of the twelve to seal his testimony with his blood (Acts xii.)—a fact which implies that he was one of the most prominent witnesses of the Lord at that time in Jerusalem, Peter being the other; and John had the honour of serving the Lord longer (apparently) than any of his fellow-apostles, and of suffering much for His sake. When he sent to the Churches the Book of the Revelation, he described himself as their "brother and fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and endurance in Jesus." (Rev. i. 9.) We thus learn that a life of faithful service to the Lord may be as true a drinking of His cup and a partaking in His baptism as the actual laying down of the life for His sake. And it will be no matter of surprise if these two brethren are seen very near to the Lord in His kingdom, yea, in the very seats they coveted, though, whatever place may be theirs, they will occupy it with a mind far different from that which |