inscribed the name of the Jew, not only enjoying all rights and privileges with his Christian brethren, but fully deserving them, and excelling in every department of life in which he now is allowed and willing to engage. And his religion-the holy doctrine of an indivisible Unity of God, of man's creation in the image of God, of our destination, to become by virtue, justice, and charity, contented in this, and happy in after life-is daily gaining more ground as the only religion complying with the demands of reason and our destination on earth. And Israel does not falter in the accomplishment of its holy mission,-to be the redeeming Messiah to all mankind, to become a nation of priests, teaching and preaching the truth."

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. JAMES.

Herod the king killed James the brother of John with the sword.

THERE is something very suggestive in the silence of Holy Scripture. It teaches by what it declares or reveals, but not less by what it passes over without a single word. Its histories stand alone in this peculiarity of their construction-that events are not portrayed at all, or only touched with the lightest hand, to which we should have attached immense importance, and that the emphasis is laid upon those which we should never have dreamt of making prominent. The Bible often says most when it says nothing, and, if its speech be silvern, its silence is golden. We feel this about the blank which we find between the twelfth and thirtieth years of our Lord's life; and it speaks to us very powerfully of the long preparation in secret needed for work such as His; it reproves the impatience and eager striving and snatching at hasty results to which our age is so prone; it condemns that foolish plucking of the unripe fruits of the intellect and of the heart-that boastful exhibition of precocious immaturity which some seem to regard as far better than the quiet cultivation and ripening of power, for a precious and abundant harvest in the appointed days of the distant future. It is the most expressive rendering of the lessonWork in secret and wait in patience the Divinely-appointed days of the fulness of time. So it is in relation to the after history of the young man whom Jesus loved, but who went out

from His presence, mourning because he could not receive His word, and sell all that he had and give to the poor. How much we should have esteemed the knowledge of his future, and how often now do we wonder what he thought of Christ when the tragic scenes of Calvary had been passed through, and the Conqueror of Death had ascended to the right hand of power. So, too, it is in reference to the experiences of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, as she stood by the cross, as she viewed the empty grave of her Son, as she mingled with His disciples when they knew Him no longer after the flesh, but only as the Lord of Life in heaven. So, too, it is in relation to her later history. How, when, where she died, and what was the character of her end. How we should like to know this-not because such an experience as that of Mary was unique or unlike that of any other holy woman, but because every incident recorded of her tends to awaken interest and to excite sympathy, and because we feel that such an one could have taught us how to live, how to suffer, and how to die. The same thing appears in the history of the Apostles of the Lord. We all love, and admire, and reverence Peter-the warm-hearted, impulsive, clear-visioned, farsighted, and ever active disciple, who was first in everythingfirst in perception, first in speech, first in act, first in mistakes and sin-first in repentance, first in devotion, first in self-sacrifice. But how little we know of him. In his Epistles, we feel how much he has learnt, how much he has mellowed and ripened, how much he has gained by the manifold discipline of God. But he passes away from us in silence, and we have only the bare tradition of his crucifixion, head downwards, instead of what we should dearly have prized-a certain record of the later incidents of his Apostolic and Christian course, and the manner in which he glorified God in his martyrdom.

The same thing meets us when we read the language employed in reference to the martyrdom of St. James. Two words in the original suffice to tell of his cruel fate. He was one of

the foremost of the Apostles-the presiding elder of the Church at Jerusalem-one of the three favoured ones of the Lord. On all special occasions He took with Him Peter, and James, and John. They were with Him when He was transfigured on the Mount. They were with Him when He raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead; and they only were near Him in His great agony, when, in the sacred shades of Gethsemane, "He sweat as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground." And this was the first death in the Apostolic order-the first martyrdom in the number of the Twelve, upon whom the Spirit had descended from on high. One would have thought that here, if anywhere, was the place at which an evangelist would have

paused that here, if anywhere, we might have expected the fullest particulars of an Apostle's last experiences and glorious triumph over the fear of death. But it is just here that the darkness seems most profound. In the case of Stephen, we read particularly of his glorious and eloquent discourse before his judges; of the madness of the people; of their gnashing on him with their teeth; of his calmness and their rage; of his face, which shone like the face of an angel; of his vision of Christ; of his prayer for his murderers; of his commendation of his spirit to the care of his Divine Redeemer; of his falling asleep. But Stephen was only one of the seven: his office and work for Christ in the Church were every way inferior to that of the Apostles. Noble as he was, both as a man, a thinker, and a speaker, we can hardly suppose him the equal of several of those who were of the Apostolic college; and yet of the death by which they glorified God, Holy Scripture is altogether silent, or the silence is only broken in a single verse, where we read, "Herod killed James the brother of John with the sword."

This sacred silence is surprising, but it is not without its admonitions. There are things which are too precious for common use or observation; things which are meant to be kept by God only; things which would lose their sanctity if they were too much spoken of-too much handled. "Our life is hid with Christ in God;" we have secrets which are best left there. Stephen's death is recorded, for it was the first in the Church, and there was in it a revelation of the Lord's readiness to help His servants in their extremity-a revelation of the Lord's readiness to receive the parted spirits of those who believed in Him. But this revelation being given for all the ages, it was enough; and the curtain drawn from off the inner and deeper experiences of a spirit in Christ in one case, is allowed to remain over others, so that the holier things in life and the most precious things in death might not become common or be exposed needlessly to the eye of the ignorant and unsympathetic. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints; there we have to leave it-it does not matter— it is of no account whatever whether it be also precious in our

own.

But not only so, this silence in reference to the dying experiences of the first Apostolic martyr is suggestive of a double danger to which we are ever exposed-the danger first of making the experiences of other men the rule and measure of our own, and, especially those which belong to times of sorrow and the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death. How difficult a thing it is for Christians to be perfectly natural-to allow their character to develop itself Christwards or heavenwards, according to its own constituents, or according to their circumstances.

How constantly is it found that what are called happy death-beds draw away Christian souls from the simplicity that is in Christ, or hinder their enjoyment of God's perfect peace, by inducing a desire for the same kind of assurance, and the same degree of rapture or of joy. How often do Christians forget that individuality of experience and development which belongs to our life; forget that we each have our own peculiarities of character, and must have, because of them, a special set of experiences, and a special development of grace and joy. No other man can be what any particular dying saint is, and none other, therefore, can, naturally, feel, or speak, or act like him. Now, if we had a large disclosure of those particular experiences of dying men in Holy Scripture which have so powerful an influence upon Christian sympathies, we should have been in danger of aiming at their reproduction in our own diverse histories and circumstances, and should have mourned and despaired of our friends when their deaths revealed facts widely different from those recorded in Holy Writ. On this account I am thankful that I do not know how the men I most revere and love passed away from earth, as it enables me to believe easily what otherwise would have been almost impossible, that the death which transpires amid clouds and darkness-amid haze and shadow-amid discomfort and pain that the death which is without testimony and ecstatic delight, is just as safe to the believer-just as precious in the sight of the Lord, as the most glorious and triumphant departure of which I ever read in the annals of Christian history.

But this silence reminds us not only of the danger of making the experiences of others the rule and measure of our own, it reminds us also of the danger of saint or relic worship-the deification of the departed. The system of Grecian idolatry was in its essence largely this: many of the systems of Eastern Polytheism into which the Church was to be brought into immediate contact were based on this tendency of human nature to exalt unduly the dead. The ancient and the modern myth alike rest upon this foundation. It would have put in peril the historic character of our holy religion; it would have put in peril its purity as a religion from God and not of men, if this tendency had been fostered. We see to what it would have grown in the pseudo gospels-the false, mythical histories of Christ which are extant, and in the exaggerations of such ancient books as the Apostolic constitutions. Many of the early fathers have been betrayed by this false reverence and veneration for the dead, into the admission of the most absurd and dangerous statements into their writings, and, in consequence, we cannot implicitly rely on them. The system of the Roman Church shows us this tendency in its full development and in its destructive and pernicious re

sults. The silence of Holy Scripture as to the death of the Apostles, the circumstances of their departure, the time and place of their burial, is a most expressive warning of a great danger to which the Church would have been exposed, of erecting shrines over the dead, of reverencing them unduly, of placing them in a false position as mediators, of making them false Christs, or false Gods. Christ is all, and that His glory may remain one and supreme, Holy Scripture is silent where most gladly we should have listened to its lengthened and detailed speech.

But coming now to the matter of this simple statement, "he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword," there are several things which suggest themselves, well worthy a devout consideration. First of all, we cannot but feel the contrast which is here suggested between youthful desires and purposes, and the actual experiences of matured life.

James was the brother of the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee. He was a man, as was his brother, of great vividness of perception-of great force of character, and of surpassing eloquence and power of utterance. When the Lord called them to the Apostolic office he surnamed them because of this torrent and flame-like power of speech, Boanerges or Sons of Thunder. They were not noisy speakers-though very often that is supposed to be the meaning of the designation. They did not roar like thunder, but they were vivid, flashing, sharp, scorching, destructive as the lightning poured out of the thunder-cloud. They were both intensely ambitious-intensely self-seeking, and they dreamt of greatness for themselves, until they could not resist the utterance of their desires and their hopes; and they came with their mother Salome to Jesus, with the modest request of their pride and inexperience, " Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand and the other on thy left hand in thy glory." But Jesus said unto them, " Ye know not what ye ask. Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized." That was the beginning, and this is the end: "And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword." That was the prophecy, and this is the fulfilment. That was youth in its heedless, headlong, unconscious utterances of desire for the future; and this is age, experiencing the bitterness of life and of death-realizing the terrible reality of the cup of sorrow and the baptism of blood.

How much of disappointment, as we esteem it, is there here! "Grant us to sit on thy right hand and on thy left hand in thy