time to fulfil our dear dreams; but it is not given. "My book, my book," were the last words of a well-known writer on his forlorn deathbed; and all of us, when it comes to the end, will long for a little season more in which to put the finishing touch to something, that we may leave some completed work behind us. But we must die and leave things unfinished. He did all things well, at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, neither too much nor too little. "It is finished"—it was done, and He could rest.

"It is finished." The great sacrifice for the sins of the whole world was offered. We who have broken God's law, and finished nothing, have a new and living way made open by His blood. When He said, "It is finished," His joy was not for Himself, merely that His suffering was over, but for His people-that the poorest, and the most sinful, and the most imperfect might now come in all peace to God-that a door had been opened which no man and no demon could shut.

From His earliest years He had been busy in the things of His Father. His life-long sustenance had been to do the will of Him that sent Him, and to finish His work; and now that the

work is finished, the confidence of faith utters itself in the joyous cry

7. "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." We who cannot say, "It is finished," are fain to add to these words, "For Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of truth." "I go," said one of old, entering a monastery; "I go to a logic that fears not the logic of death." That logic is, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me." Not till our sinful souls are cleansed and redeemed can we commit them to the holy hands of the Father; but He who could say "It is finished," committed a perfectly white soul to God. He needed not to speak of redemption. He had fulfilled the law, and so the soul that had done and borne all He committed into the sure unwearied hands of His Father. It was a most blessed thing to fall into those hands, and so He cries with a loud voice, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." It is a fearful thing to have to part reluctantly from life, to be dragged out of it with sin cleaving to the soul. It is a fearful

thing to fall into the hands of the tremendous energy of life and righteousness, without being prepared for the meeting. But it is a blessed thing to yield one's self in peaceful trust, knowing that one has not to fall far, and the fall is into the hands of the living Father. But Jesus used these words as none other could. He deepened them, and with Him they mean: "I who do not, unless I choose, need to lose hold of life, of my own will and by my own act let it go. My soul is not required, but by my own choice I commend it, my Father, to Thee. No man could take my life from me; I lay it down of myself." Without claiming for ourselves the whole profound meaning of these words, we may yet use them as expressing the habitual temper of our lives, and, supremely, our frame of mind at death. Not to a tyrant, not to an unknown force, but to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ we belong, living and dying. "Trust in God," says Faber, "is the last of all things, and the whole of all things."

CHAPTER XX.

The Burial and Resurrection of Christ.

"The Lord is risen indeed."

IT

"One place alone had ceased to hold its prey,
A form had pressed it, and was there no more;
The garments of the grave beside it lay

Where once they wrapped Him on the rocky floor.

"He only with returning footsteps broke

The eternal calm wherewith the tomb was bound; Among the sleeping dead alone He woke,

And blessed with outstretched hands the hosts around.

"Well is it that such blessing hovers here,
To soothe each sad survivor of the throng,
Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere,
And pour their woe the loaded air along."

IX. Poems by V.

T is part of Paul's gospel that Christ was buried, and there are circumstances of peculiar significance connected with the burial. His body after death was not dishonored as others were. Instead of being left to hang on the Cross to be profaned by the soldiers, it was taken down and laid by loving hands most reverently in the tomb. With that strange consonance which

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marks all the history, He who was born of a virgin was laid in a virgin grave. He was as a wayfaring man that turned aside to tarry for a night, and He was well lodged in that dark inn. His grave was in a garden amidst the springing flowers, beneath the soft Syrian sunshine: there the Rose of Sharon was laid amongst the roses. There is here a prophecy, whether designed or not. Just as the flowers in winter weather go down into their roots, and keep house there till the breath of spring summons them, so He lay down for the appointed time to rise again.

He saw, it is written, no corruption. The stone which covered Him was more changed than He. Everything in the world which His spirit had left was changed save the body that lay sleeping in the holy grave. There He lay, with the flowers around Him, wrapped in fine linen, waiting for the summons. Yet it is to be noticed also that this tomb was a borrowed tomb. He had died for our sakes poor, and so though the grave allotted Him was the best that love could give, it was still a borrowed grave. We mark also the condition of the grave when He left it. The napkin about His head was not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapt together in a place