thousand hungry people, the great object was, not only to relieve the wants of the body, but to lead them to labour, not for the meat that perisheth, but for that bread which came down from heaven. When He opened the eyes of the blind, it was to lead men to see that He could open their spiritual eyes, and cause them to see the glory of God. When He made the sick of the palsy to be well, it was to show that He had power also to forgive sin. And when He raised the dead, it was to teach us that He can raise those who are dead in trespasses and sins to life; that He can command the spirits, the souls of men, and that whether they are on earth or in eternity, He can command them and they will obey Him. So men are told to arise from the dead, i. e. spiritual death, and go to Christ, who will give them life. Oh, how many parents have seen their children converted to God, and have wept for joy;-"this my son was lost, and is found; was dead, and is alive again!" Christ could have stayed upon earth to this hour, and spent these hundreds of years in going about healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, opening the ears of the deaf, and raising the dead; but there is a greater work than all this. He is preparing to raise all the dead, to give healing to the soul, and to cause ten thousand times ten thousand hearts to rejoice,— to rejoice for ever and ever!

We have no account of anything great or good, which the man who was raised from the

dead did in after life. We have no account of the long life of the mother. No, it was done to manifest to us the character of the great Redeemer. It was to cause us, and all who shall ever read the story, to believe and trust in His mercy and in His almighty power. The design of Christ is chiefly to give spiritual blessings to men, and therefore He does not continue such miracles. When the great multitude of people saw the young man rise up from the dead at the word of Christ, and heard him speak, and saw him given back to his mother, great fear fell on them, and they broke out in shouts and glorified God! Oh, this was only one act of Jesus our Lord! But at the last great day, when every eye shall see Him, as He comes on the clouds of heaven, when He has raised up all the dead, when He has gathered all His people, when all His mighty acts have been seen, when all His great works of mercy have been made known,-there will go up from all the universe of God a shout such as was never heard before! Fear and reverence, hope and joy, will fill the hearts of all His people; and all will draw near to Him,-every holy being in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, saying, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

"Consider the lilies of the field."-MATT. vi. 28.

My dear children, when the blessed Saviour was on earth, "He went about doing good." He went on foot from place to place, healing the sick, and preaching the gospel wherever He was. And as the people followed Him in throngs, bringing their sick to be healed, He used to preach to them in the streets, and so His sermons were mostly preached out of doors, and by the wayside. He did not take texts to preach from, as ministers now do, but made his sermons out of anything around Him. At one time, when the morning sun was coming up over the hills, He pointed to it and told His disciples that they were the light of the world! At another time,

He pointed to the salt which had been washed and drenched, till it was good for nothing, and then showed that His people are like it, when they lose His spirit. There is a white city on the top of yonder high hill, and it is seen from every place around, and He tells His disciples that they are like such a city set on a hill. That man who is ploughing keeps his eye on the furrow; he does not turn and look back a moment; and Christ tells us that, if we look back, we are not fit for the kingdom of heaven. From the man sowing in the field, Christ teaches us how the word of God is preached, and how different men receive it. So He teaches from the vine by the wayside; from the fig-tree in sight; from the vineyard on the hillside; from the casting of a net into the sea; from the lighting of a sparrow on the ground; and from the falling of a hair. Then He sees some lilies, and tells us to consider them,-how they are more richly clothed than Solomon in all his glory ever

was!

Do you wonder that Christ preached from these things? The same Hand that wrote the texts in the Bible, painted the lily. God has painted the skies, and made the stars to flash and sparkle, and turned the clouds of the morning and evening into palaces of gold, or rolled them up like great, floating mountains of silver. He does not glue the clouds to the sky, nor hang them up there like great sheets of lead, nor spread them out like lakes of ink, but He rolls

them from one beautiful form into another. He folds the heavens in festoons, and hangs the rainbow over the earth like a great wreath of flowers. He paints the grass on which you tread, the deepest green. And on the summer's morning, when the world sits silent, as if waiting for a choir of angels to lift up their voices and praise Him, or when the great red sun goes down at night like a joyous child going to his pillow, how beautiful it is! What a look the sun throws back, when he turns the lake into a great basin of gold!

And the Spring! when the Winter goes away, what a resurrection! The river bursts from the chains of ice that held it so fast; the little seed that lay freezing in the ground begins to sprout; the little bird whose notes seem to tremble for joy, the small insect that leaps up and utters his hum of gladness, the mountains with their thin veil of blue over their faces, the buds that swell and burst, and the very trees that seem to clap their hands for joy,—all preach about God!

"Consider the lilies!" We must, my dear children, study the works of God. Oh! He might have made the grass to be coloured like the mud in the street; the trees to shoot up their branches like iron wire, without a green leaf to cover them; the morning sky to be black, like the pall on a coffin; and He might have made every beast to howl in pain, and every bird to shriek in notes of agony, and every bush to bristle