And round my soul there seemed to close
Black night for evermore-

Lost in the whirl of maddened seas
That broke upon no shore.

But, sudden, on my path ye light;
Earth rises green again;

God's pure and white-winged messengers
HE sends not forth in vain!

To find new springs in quickened souls
O'er life's great deep they roam;
Then back to Heaven's ark of love
They bear the green leaf home!

Sweet teachers, by the grave-side met,
My soul to God ye lift,

Who mutely take with grateful hand
The sweets that are His gift;
Nor dread, in blameless innocence,
The sting that comes with time;
But, undismayed, in wonder clasp
The roses of the prime!

Those gems of earth ye cull and drop,

Ye lose, yet feel no woe;

Ye do not care to bind them here,
Nor miss them where ye go:
Each flower ye love, in bloom as pure,
In brighter pasture, waves

To greet ye in your backward path
To your home beyond the graves.

Go, rest in slumbers soft as deep!
Perchance a passing gleam

Shall show ye through the transport caught

From some untroubled dream,

How patience to the passion came,

And gladness to the prayer,

Of one who, by the Silent Land,

Met angels unaware!

SUNDAY THOUGHTS FOR WEEK-DAY PRACTICE.

PHILIP'S REPLY TO NATHANAEL.

"Philip saith unto him, Come and sce.”—Sr. JOHN i. 46.

THE apostles of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, were neither demigods nor heroes; but as certain of their number testified, they were men of like passions with us. Only so far as they were such, could they present us either with examples or warnings, encouragements or counsels. Being so, not only were their natural dispositions as diverse as those of any like number of men in any age or place, but those dispositions, as similar variations of temper in ourselves, presented impediments, some more, some less, formidable to the edification of the structure of "the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.' In two disciples, who should afterwards bo apostles, among the earliest called, we observe a remarkable divergence of disposition—in Philip and Bartholomew, who is otherwise believed to be the Nathanael spoken of by St. John. St. Philip from the beginning is a goodly example to us all. It is the plain duty of every one whom Christ finds to find as many others as he can, for Christ. Jesus found Philip, saying unto him, "Follow me," and Philip found Nathanael, just as on the previous day, Andrew, having been called, brought to Jesus his own brother Simon. But while Philip was of an impartial judgment, Nathanael, like many more, seems to have been the subject of a foregone conclusion, which his brother disciple had to combat ere he could bring him to the Saviour. "We have found Him," said St. Philip, "of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Joseph." Finding Him, he had found all goodness and all truth. "And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see;" as if to say, Judge for yourself, as I have done; do not make up your mind beforehand that it cannot be. Philip, we say, may have been unlike some of us, but many of us are like Nathanael. He had come to the conclusion if not where good was, at least where it was not, to be expected. It was not to be looked for from Nazareth. The town may have been poor and insignificant, and its inhabitants may have been of no exalted character. "Can any good thing come out of" it? Many of us are like this disciple. Wo seem to make up our minds that goodness is to be expected, if not only, yet chiefly, from particular persons, or in particular places, that it is to be found here but not there, or there but not here.

There is something to be said for such an expectation. Places