THE PULPIT IN THE FAMILY.

THE VOICE OF THE SON OF GOD.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.”— John v. 25.

T was the Lord Jesus who spoke. He spoke solemnly, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." He spoke of a time close at hand, "The hour is coming"; nay, it was actually come, for He said, "The hour is coming, and now is." What was it that He told them of? What was to happen? What was so near? The dead should hear his voice, and live.

At that very moment He was speaking, his voice was then being heard. Who heard it? His disciples were there; but many besides the Jews, the unbelieving Jews, the multitude. They stood there before Him, living people; yet He, who knew all, knew that most of them were spiritually dead. Yet, if even they would hear his voice, hear it really, hear it in their hearts, then they should live. For He had life to give. And He would give it to all who would hear Him thus. It was an invitation to them to hear thus, a promise, a prophecy.

In the words before (verse 24) our Lord had just given a like promise: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." These words show clearly what sort of hearing He meant-hearing and believing; and what kind of life He spoke of-everlasting life; and further, that the spiritually dead, who hear his voice and believe, do pass at once from a state of death into a state of life.

The words that follow the text also throw light on it. There He who promises life to the dead claims the right and power to do so: "For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”

When Jesus thus spoke, when He thus solemnly told them of the dead hearing his voice, and receiving life, perhaps He saw surprise in some faces, for He went on to say, "Marvel not at this," let not this astonish you. And then He went on to tell them of something, to outward appearance, yet more surprising. If they wondered at what He had just

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said, well might they be astonished at what He would now tell them. It was this: "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." Those spoken of before, who should hear the voice of the Son of God and live, were dead spiritually, but in the body they were alive: those of whom He now spoke were, not the living, but the dead. They also should hear his voice, and come forth; all of them, all that were in the graves.

This has not yet taken place. We, at this day, are in the very same position as those who heard the Lord say these words. He speaks to us as well as to them. We shall have part in this as well as they.

There is a day coming, when these words will come true. A voice will be heard in the graves, bidding the dead come forth. In every grave, however ancient, that voice will be heard. In crowded cemeteries, in lonely burial-places, in solitary graves, in the pits dug for the slain in battle, in the very depths of the sea-will the voice sound. It is the voice of the Son of God, calling the dead to rise. It will be heard and obeyed. From every grave, from every secret place, the dead will come forth. Then they will stand before the throne, and be judged.

And now the books will be opened, and every secret thing will be brought to light, and the whole lives of all who have ever lived will be laid bare, and men-all men-will be judged accordingly.

Then will follow a great and final separation. Some will come forth to life: the rest to judgment, condemnation, eternal death. There will be no middle place. There is none now; there will be none then.

This will be, when the Son of God comes. The voice will not sound from where He is now, in his glory; He will come in the clouds of heaven, and so He will call the dead from the graves.

That voice has not spoken yet. But his other voice, the first voice, the voice that calls the spiritually dead to live-this voice is speaking, and speaking to all who will hear. In the gospel Christ calls all to believe and live. He speaks to every sinner-to his conscience, to his heart-warns him of guilt, sin, ruin, and death, and calls him to awake, to repent, to believe, and to find life in Him.

Some who hear his voice in the gospel are disciples already, as was the case when He spoke on earth. They listen to his voice still, and love to hear it. They drink in his words. They are words of life to them, reviving and refreshing them. They hear his voice now with joy; and they do not tremble at the thought of hearing that other voice, that will wake the dead. For, living or dying, they are the Lord's; and, when He comes, they look to meet Him with joy.

But others who hear are spiritually dead. Full of life and activity in the body, they have no life in their souls. They are dead in trespasses and sins, dead in godlessness, worldliness, carelessness. Yet He speaks to them, calls them, invites them. He has done so often, but they would not hear. He does so again. Will they not hear now, ere it be too late? Will they not hear and live?

"The hour is coming," the Lord says, about the

call to rise from the grave. It is surely coming; but He tells us not when. But "the hour is coming, and now is," when He calls dead souls to live, and when some hear and find life. Even now His voice speaks; this very day He calls. Hear, and live! Ere it be too late. For His voice will not always speak thus. The day will come when it will speak thus no more; then it will be too late to hear; for then the voice will speak differently. For the first voice and the second are, in fact, the same. When once it shall be heard in the graves, calling the dead to rise, then no more calls to believe, no more calls to live, no more gracious invitations, no more pleadings of the Spirit, no more forbearance! The last call will have been heard, the last invitation received, the last opportunity had, when the voice is heard by all, as it never was heard before, saying, "Come forth!"

Sabbath Thoughts.

SELAH.

Pages for the young.

LILY DOYLE.

III.-TEARS FOR ANOTHER'S FAULT. LORENCE, do run and put on your hat at once, and let us have a real good walk together," exclaimed Lily Doyle, as she was shown into her friend's home the day after their return to Shampton.

The girl needed no second behest, and in five minutes the two young friends left the house, but proceeded the first moment to move in opposite directions.

"Where are you running off to ?" said Lily, rather sharply.

"Why, to fetch Katie, you know, as we promised."

"Oh, I did not mean to go there the very first day. Besides, I have not asked mamma's permission, and she is out now, so that settles the matter. Come along, the ice bears splendidly, even papa gave me permission to come across the river to you just now, and the boys have got some

Florence followed somewhat reluctantly, and the thought of the solitary, waiting, disappointed Katie no little spoiled her expected pleasure in the morning's amusement. Lily saw this, and felt yet more cross, partly from growing jealousy, and partly from an uneasy conscience, and instead of blaming herself she was unreasonably angry with inoffending Katie, the innocent cause of her discomfort.

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There are three Selah pauses in the third Psalm. Let us examine them as illustrative of the occasions on which such notes occur. In the second verse: "Many there be which say of my soul, there is no help for him in God. Selah."

This is the Selah of wonder. The child of God starts in amazement at the bare thought of such blasphemy against his God and his Father. No help for him in God! His tongue is hushed, his harp is silent with astonishment; he pauses awhile in horror, then gathering up his strength he breaks forth into a burst of holy confidence, "But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head;" a truth to which his own experience bears witness, "I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of his holy hill. Selah."

This is the Selah of praise. Again the voice of song pauses, and we seem to see the eye of the singer raised in mute adoration.

From his own experience he is led to a grand general truth, and in the last verse he cries, "Salvation belongeth unto the Lord: Thy blessing is upon Thy people. Selah." This is the Selah of triumph. He began with complaint, but he ends with victory.

"How did that poor little Miss Grinfell enjoy her unusually gay morning, Florence dear?" said Mrs. Kneller, as she met her daughter in the hall.

The tears came into Florence's eyes as she replied, "We never fetched her, mamma."

Mrs. Kneller knew her daughter too well to think the broken promise lay at her door, so she said gently, "Well, suppose you run round and fetch her directly after lunch to spend the afternoon with you. I met her aunt at the rector's the other day, and she promised her to us as often as we liked to have her."

Florence's eyes sparkled with joy, till a sudden remembrance of having most probably to encounter Miss Somerton, Katie's aunt, flushed her cheeks with painful shyness in advance.

"Won't you come too, mamma? I don't think I can go alone," she said anxiously.

"Not to do a kind action, my child? I cannot come out this afternoon; I am expecting a visitor. But you know you need not go unless you like. I leave the matter entirely to your own feelings."

After a little struggle and battle with herself, helped by the feeling that it would be even more difficult not to go, Florence started on her errand, and found the interview with the undemonstrative sufferer a much less formidable affair than she had pictured.

Katie's grateful joy in accepting the invitation can scarcely be imagined by those who lead more cheerful and love-lighted lives.

Just before she left in the evening one of Lily Doyle's brothers came over with a note to Florence, asking her to go to Lily in the morning, as her house was nearer the skating-place than

that of the Knellers.

"What!" exclaimed Lily, on her brother's return with the message. "That Katie Grinfell there, and I have not been there yet, and only four times last summer holidays, and then coming here with Florence to-morrow, too! Why, I only"

Here Lily stopped, for she did not like to proclaim aloud that she had actually deprived herself of what she considered the pleasure of fetching Florence, to avoid having Katie's company, on the plea of its being too far to go back for her. But she had not the amount of self-restraint necessary to enable her to hide her bad-humour from the two girls the following morning, and when they both tried to soothe her by paying her particular attention, she exclaimed angrily, "Oh, you have each other, you don't want me," and ended by skating off by herself, and leaving Katie in tears, and Flo in a state of shocked grief and disappointment. She had never experienced before the sad, miserable effects of jealousy on otherwise fine and generous natures.

But at length she turned to her companion with a hopeful, "Cheer up, Katie, I will run round and make it all right with Lil to-morrow, and I know she will be sorry for all this directly she really thinks about it. For, indeed, Katie, she does try hard to conquer her faults, and she is sincere and humble about them. And she really is very fond of you, I know."

"Yes," said Katie sadly, "I know quite well how nice and good she is; that is why I am so sorry to have seemed to come in between you. But I don't know how to give you up now I have found out how very, very happy it is to have your kindness." And once more the tears threatened to roll down the speaker's cheeks.

"We are not going to think of giving each other up," answered Florence, confidently. "We are going to be the three best friends who ever lived, and a wonder to everyone. You see if I am not right."

"You will have to be very quick to-morrow morning to get to Lily Doyle and have a talk with her, and yet be back in time to fetch your grandmamnia, as you say you always do on Christmas Day, to go to church with you," said Katie, as she and Flo said good-bye to one another on Miss Somerton's doorstep.

"Oh, it won't take me very long to go to Lil's," was the reply. "The ice is so firm that I shall be able to run over Sedge Brook, as well as that bend of the river, so it won't take me ten minutes to get to South Park Square."

IV. BROKEN ICE.

Christmas Day broke bright and clear, and Katie woke up in good time, in spite of an extra fit of illness of her aunt's having kept her up very late the previous night.

She lay in her little bed thinking till she heard the Christmas bells ringing out the beautiful chimes through the frosty air. Then she rose, and wrapping herself in a warm dressing-gown and a shawl over that, she opened her window and stood listening to the sweet sounds that she hoped breathed forth at least a promise of peace and goodwill between her and Lily and Florence.

The milkman came up. "You are very late," said Susan rather shortly. Miss Somerton had been asking for her morning cup of tea three times, with the restless longing of a sufferer, and Susan cared so much for her mistress that she was always rather angry with anyone who occasioned her inconvenience, either intentionally or unintentionally.

But the milkman was not inclined to take blame he did not deserve, and he was not slow to reply, "I am as early as ever 1 used to be before the frost; and last night Muster Brinton he had his gardener break the edges of the ice all round the Sedge Pond, to keep the idlers off to-day, he said, so I could not cut across it as I've a-been doing of late. But I'm free to confess I expect there'll be an accident on it afore the day's out, for the

111 night's frost has just been enough to glaze over the broken places, and Muster Brinton ain't had the thought to put up a notice."

The man went on his way, and Katie shut the window and began her toilet, trying to remember what she had heard lately about the Sedge Brook that had caused the milkman's words to arrest her attention so quickly. Suddenly she recollected that it was across that brook Florence Kneller had said she meant to run to pay her visit of pacification to Lily Doyle. For some moments she felt paralyzed. Florence would be drowned. She would lose the first, only friend she had ever had. She hurried on her clothes, and flew to her aunt to ask her permission to run and give warning of the brook's dangerous state.

"I cannot spare you; I am feeling very ill this morning," said Miss Somerton. "But here is a piece of paper and a pencil. Write a few words to Miss Doyle, and ask her to send up one of her brothers to the Knellers. Jones the postman is now coming down the road, and he won't mind leaving it at South Park Square on his way home. Your friend Florence will get it long before she will be starting away from home."

- Yes, there seemed no possibility of doubting that, so Katie wrote her note and gave it to civil Jones, and felt comforted. Jones delivered it in due time. Lily was just coming out of her room when her maid gave it to her. In a sudden hope that it was from Florence to ask forgiveness for what Lily chose to call her fickleness, she tore it open and looked at the signature. She instantly flung it on to her dressing-table without reading another word, and ran downstairs, exclaiming, "Always that horrid Katie; I declare I quite hate the girl!"

"What a Christian-like sentiment for Christmas morning," said Mr. Doyle gravely, as he came out of his room at the

moment.

Lily blushed and hung her head; but, unhappily, repentance did not come yet.

An hour later Katie saw George Doyle coming along the road, and, unable to resist her anxiety to hear about Florence, she ran out and asked him which of them had been over to the Knellers for Lily that morning since she sent up her note.

"Which!" repeated George, with a puzzled look. “Why none of us. I am the first who has come out of our doors today, and I have certainly not been there."

Katie stared at him for a few moments with a look of dumb despair, and then without another word she flew off towards the fields like a hunted wild animal. George's first impulse was to follow her, but a second thought led him to return home. "What did Katie Grinfell say in the note she sent you up this morning?" he exclaimed to Lily, as he burst into the diningroom, where the large family-party were still at breakfast, or rather chatting after the meal till the bells should ring for church.

"I'm sure I don't know, I haven't read it yet," said Lily, rather sulkily.

"Then read it at once," said her brother, excitedly, "for I'm sure there's something serious or dreadful in it. You should have just heard her dreadful low cry when I said you had not asked any of us to go up to the Knellers, and the way she tore off without even waiting to get her hat."

Lily waited to hear no more, but ran up for the important note. In another minute she came back trembling and white, and put it into her father's hands, gasping, "Oh, let some one go and warn her; don't, don't say it's too late."

“Pray God it be not!" murmured Mr. Doyle. Rising, he gave the note to his wife, and saying solemnly, "Have everything ready in case of need," and calling his eldest son to accompany him he got his hat, and hastened away in the direction of the Sedge Brook. The two gentlemen reached it in time to see two bright young heads disappear under the ice. Katie had gained its brink just as Florence, whose light figure had safely bounded over the first edge, gained the side nearest to her, stepped on the treacherous glazing before she heard her

warning, and fell through. By dint of care and caution Katie had contrived to lie down on the ice, and catch her friend's clothing and keep her head above water; more she had not strength to do but pray for aid for them both. Just as it appeared the already weakened ice again gave way, and both were buried in the water, and sucked under the still remaining ice. Happily by this time plenty of aid was at hand, and the bodies of the two young girls were got out, and carried up to Mr. Doyle's house that their relatives might be spared the sudden shock of seeing their condition.

For a long time not only the weeping, penitent Lily, but all others, including the doctors, thought the messages to the two homes must convey the sad tale of sudden bereavement. Happily, however, the strenuous efforts made for the recovery of Florence and Katie were at length crowned with success.

"Warn Florence, warn Florence," murmured Katie's white lips, as with a little shiver and a long-drawn sigh she opened her eyes once more. The sound of her friend's voice recalled the second young patient to life, and a few minutes later poor Lily was allowed to lay her warm, wet cheek against the pale, cold one of her schoolfellow, and murmur heartbroken words of penitence. For a while she scarcely dared to raise her eyes to Katie.

By the evening both the invalids were so far restored in health and happiness as to be able to join the party assembled in Mr. Doyle's cheerful drawing-room, whither all the Knellers and even Miss Somerton had been also drawn to rejoice over the unbroken family circles.

It needs only to add that Katie Grinfell and her schoolfellow were spared many years to be a joy and comfort to all around them, and especially to their unselfish, generous-hearted friend Lily Doyle, who never forgot the lesson taught her by that bitterly mournful Christmas-morning. Her jealousy had received an awful check, and her renewed and prayerful efforts to fight against it were rewarded with a slow but sure victory, bringing out her bright good nature with a lustre it had never had before.

XI

VIII

און

ΙΛ

LEAD.

Pea. V. 8.

Lead me.

Lead

Thy people.

Psa. Ix. 9.

Who

will lead me?

Our readers may take the word STAND for their next exercise.

THE SUNDAY ALBUM.

NO. I.—SHIELD.—p. 48.

I. The Lord the shield and defence of his people. "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield" (Gen. xv. 1). "O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help" (Deut. xxxiii. 29).

"With favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield” (Psa. v. 12).

"Our soul waiteth for the Lord: He is our help and our shield" (Psa. xxxiii. 20).

"The Lord is my strength and my shield" (Psa. xxviii. 7). "The Lord God is a sun and shield" (Psa. lxxxiv. 11). "He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him". (Prov. xxx. 5).

"Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation" (2 Sam. xxii. 36).

The last of these beautiful verses is found in the song of David. Perhaps he may have remembered another shield, which had proved useless to its owner-the shield of Goliath (1 Sam. xvii. 7)-and his own words to him, "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts" (v. 45). Another shield that was of no use was that of Saul: "The shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul" (2 Sam. i. 21). Shields of gold are equally unavailing, see 1 Chron. xviii. 7. Also the three hundred shields of beaten gold that King Solomon made, which, in the time of Rehoboam, the king of Egypt took away.

(Isa. xxii. 6; Jer. xlvi. 3; Nahum ii. 3.)

In building the wall of Jerusalem the half of Nehemiah's men worked, while the other half "held both the spears and the shields," as valiant defenders of the builders (Neh. iv. 16).

Now there is just one more shield to be mentioned, and it is the only one spoken of in the New Testament, a shield that we all need and must all take, for it is not a useless shield like that of Goliath or that of Saul, though we have a far worse enemy to deal with than they had. Dear reader, learn this verse: "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked" (Eph. vi. 16).