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length, exceeding 300 stanzas. In the earlier part we have the following lines:

“Whence shall my tears begin?

What first-fruits shall I bear Of earnest sorrow for my sin ?

Or how my woe declare ?

O Thou! the merciful and gracious One, Forgive the foul transgressions I have done. With Adam I have vied

Yea! passed him in my fall; And I am naked now, by pride

And lust made bare of all—

Of Thee, O God! and that celestial band,
And all the glory of the promised land.

No earthly Eve beguiled
My body into sin :

A spiritual temptress smiled,
Concupiscence within.

Unbridled passion grasped the unhallowed sweet:

Most bitter-ever bitter-was the meat.

If Adam's righteous doom,

Because he dared transgress

Thy one decree, lost Eden's bloom

And Eden's loveliness:

What recompense, O Lord! must I expect, Who all my life Thy quickening laws neglect ?

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"John Damascene," says the author of Hymns of the Eastern Church,'" has the double honour of being the last but one of the Fathers of the Eastern Church, and the greatest of her poets." He was born of good family at Damascus, and died about the year 780. One of his chief productions is the Canon for Easterday, and the circumstances under which it is still sung are calculated to make a fervid appeal to the æsthetic susceptibilites of an audience.

Midnight is drawing on. The vast congregation, holding their unlighted tapers, are awaiting with breathless eagerness the auspicious moment. The priests continue to murmur their low melancholy chant.

In

Suddenly a cannon's boom tells that
the midnight hour has struck, and
that Easter-day has begun.
stantly the voice of the Archbishop is
heard" Christ is risen!" Instantly
every voice in that vast multitude
takes up the cry with passionate
joy-" Christ is risen!" Thou-
sands of tapers dispel the darkness,
seeming "to send streams of fire in
all directions, rendering the minutest
objects distinctly visible, and casting
the most vivid glow on the expressive
countenances, full of exultation, of the
rejoicing crowd; bands of music strike
up their gayest strains; the roll of the
drum through the town," the pealing
of the cannon; the rockets sparkling
in the sky; the men clasping each
others' hands, and, with faces beam-
ing with delight, congratulating one
another, and saying, "the Lord is
risen." It is amid such scenes as these
that the Canon of John Damascene
is sung:

'Tis the day of resurrection:
Earth! tell it out abroad;
The passover of gladness!
The passover of God!
From death to life eternal,-

From earth unto the sky,
Our Christ hath brought us over,
With hymns of victory.

Cosmas of Jerusalem holds the second place among Greek ecclesiastical poets; but we must pass by his productions to mention the name and quote a few lines of St. Stephen, the nephew of St. John Damascene :

Art thou weary, art thou languid,
Art thou sore distrest ?
"Come to Me"-saith One-" and coming
Be at rest!"

Hath He marks to lead me to Him,
If He be my guide?
"In His feet and hands are wound-prints,
And His side."

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illustration of the antithetical style of many ancient hymns. The translation by Dr. Neale is cast in the prose form of the original:

They cry to Him for strength,—and from Him that was wounded to the death, and weak with mortal sickness on the cross, they obtain might.

They cry to Him for wisdom,-and from Him that condescended to the ignorance of childhood they receive counsel that cannot fail.

They cry unto Him for riches,—and from Him that had not where to lay His head, that was born in the poor inn-manger, and buried in a given grave, they receive the pearl of great price.

They cry to Him for joy,—and from the man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, they receive the pleasures that are on His right hand for evermore.*

But the glory of the hymnology of the East was now waning, while that of the Latin Church was rising fast to the meridian.

HYMNOPHILOS.

DEATH

ITS DARK AND ITS BRIGHT SIDE.†

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Ir is in vain that we try to persuade ourselves that the darkness of death is more imaginary than real. "The earth has lasted six thousand years,' says one, "and with the exception of those at present alive, the millions who have breathed upon it—splendid emperors, horny-fisted clowns, little children in whom thought has never stirred-have died. And what they have done, we also shall be able to do. It may not be so difficult, may not be so terrible, as our fears whisper." But it may be more difficult and more terrible. And what then? Shall we

*"Hymns of the Eastern Church." Translated from the Greek. By the Rev. J. W. Neale, D.D.

leave it to a peradventure and stake our eternity on a chance ? Shall we

do this, although the strongest power in our nature, the truest and last witness for God in our souls, conscience, unhesitatingly echoes the declaration of Scripture, that after death is the judgment?

"In nature,” we are told by others, "death is as beautiful as life, as needful, and for that reason as good." Have those who thus speak ever heard of the fact so plainly recorded, or do they disbelieve it,- -"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by

+ Abridged from "Rest under the Shadow of the Great Rock," by Rev. John Kennedy, M.A.

In

sin"? In vain they tell us of the decaying leaves from which in the spring new generations of things beautiful burst, and without which no troops of flowers would arise to sweeten the breath of summer. vain they tell us that new races spring -phoenix-like-from the ashes of those which have expired; and persuade us that as there is no weeping in the forest, no words of sorrow in the solitude when the tree falls and rots, so neither should we weep when death enters our home. In vain do they by such reasonings as these assure men that he whom they dread is no king of terrors after all. The tree has no future but that which exists in the new tree to whose life it may contribute. Man, every man, has his own individual, personal future, an existence which is indestructible, and whose weal or woe is dependent on present character.

Death, then, has a dark side, a very dark one; and no folly can exceed the folly of him who shuts his eyes and persuades himself that the darkness is all imaginary, except the folly of those who think they have attained the highest wisdom when they have learned to despise death. "This we are sure of," said Seneca, "the fear of death is a continual slavery, as the contempt of it is certain liberty"-a sentiment worthy of -a sentiment worthy of the man who taught that "hope and fear are the bane of human life." And yet it is a hard task," he had to confess, "to master the natural desire of life by a philosophical contempt of death, and to convince the world that there is no hurt in it, and crush an opinion that was brought up with us from our cradles." Our nature cannot be unmade in this

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That

fashion; hope and fear will belong to it as long as the world lasts. death is to be feared is not an opinion instilled into our minds from our cradles, but a sentiment born with us. And if those who did not know the sad history of man's subjection to death, and understood but very imperfectly what may be expected after death, found it difficult to "master the natural desire of life," and to attain a "contempt of death," either through philosophical argument or by the examples that were set before them of heroes and gladiators and suicides; much more shall we, before whose eyes the veil hath been taken away from both the past and the future, the cause and the consequence of death. I cannot, I dare not, despise death. I must first unlearn that it has entered the world by sin, and that after it comes the judgment. If I am to be delivered from the fear and bondage of it, it must be in some other way.

Death, then, we repeat, has a dark side, a very dark side, so dark that even inspired men when they gazed on it were oppressed by the vision "As for man his days are as grass as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." "My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are open for me." "One dieth in his full strength being wholly at ease and quiet. And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them." "Verily man at his best state is altogether vanity."

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But death has a bright side as well as a dark. The dark is turned toward

us and casts its shadow over the entire road we travel from our birth to our grave, and we find it often hard to believe that death is not all darkness. Nor is this to be wondered at. The clouds above us are sometimes so dense that they completely shut out everything beyond them from our view. Sun, moon, and stars, are to us as if they were not. And if by some chance a ray of light or a flash of lightning plays for a moment on the surface of the cloud, it is only to make the darkness more palpable and appalling. In these circumstances it requires both reflection and imagination to realize the fact that the other side of the cloud is all brightness. On that other side the sun shines brilliantly, and sheds a light serene and beautiful without an eye to see it but that of God; while the side nearest to us, and which alone we see, is by its thick darkness sending dismay into our souls. Even so is it with death. Happily, the brightness which is on the other side, and which

is as "the light of seven days," penetrates to this side, illumines our path and cheers our hearts, as we approach and enter the darkness.

But this brightness beyond, and the light and hope which stream to us from it, even while on this side the grave, are not of nature but of grace. They do not result from the mere assurance of a future state and of immortality-an assurance which, if not accompanied with the knowledge of a Saviour, only adds to the terrors of the grave. They result from faith in Him by whom both sin and death are abolished, by whom atonement for sin has been made, and at whose word death shall surrender its long-captive prey.

What a contrast between those who have this faith and those who have it not! "I tremble," said one,

"I tremble from the edge of life, to dare The dark and fatal leap, having no faith, No glorious yearning for the Apocalypse; But like a child that in the night-time cries

For light, I cry; forgetting the eclipse Of knowledge and of human destinies."

"I tread the common road into the great darkness,” said another who had no faith, "without any thought of fear, and with very much of hope. Certainly, indeed, I have none." "No fear," when there is reason to fear, is not a good but an evil. Hope that is not well founded is worse than no hope. The mere courage of one who is only risking a great peradventure, is not the courage which we should like to feel in so great a crisis as death.

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In 1860, a young poet entered London in search of fortune and fame, his heart burning with ambition to make himself a name, and to be buried in Westminster Abbey! But disease soon arrested the vain, proud course on which he had entered, and he was almost maddened by the disappointment which befell him. "My crown is laid in the dust for ever," he wrote in 1861, in the near prospect of his end. 'Nameless, too! How that troubles me! Had I but written an immortal poem, what a glorious consolation!" And while thus almost cursing his lot, and bemoaning his condition with a bitterness which no words could express, his chief friends, full of kindness to him, knew no better comfort to offer him than they found in the pages of heathen moralists. "I know," said one of them, "how easy a thing it is to give counsel, and how

poor is consolation; but still I must expect you to be brave and resigned, and to feel that, above being a poet, is the power of being a man. There is much in this world far sadder and crueller than the thought of leaving it; and the old Greeks counted every man happy who died young." "Well, if matters are as you say," wrote another," which, however, I will not wholly believe till the good physician whom I have asked to examine your chest reports it hopeless-we must accept them as we best can, you know, and see what is to be done under the inevitable conditions, and before looking in those trans-mortal directions to which good folks usually seem to think it imperative to turn their dying eyes, forgetting that the long sweet habit of earthly perception is not to be unlearned in a day, let us try what we can do on this side the eternal threshold." And thus the poor dying youth was counselled to confine his vision to this world as long as he could, and if he could not attain the fame of a great poet, at least to play the man and face death bravely. Alas! it was in vain. He could only, like the imprisoned bird, strike his wings against the bars of his cage and die because he must.

But let us see how another young poet, having faith, was able to die. Michael Bruce died,* in the twentyfirst of his age. year His Bible was found on his pillow, marked down at Jeremiah xxii. 10, Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him; and on the blank leaf this verse was written :

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* For the history of his life and death, see the last number of the "Christian Witness."

"Tis very vain for me to boast How small a price my Bible cost; The day of judgment will make clear 'Twas very cheap or very dear."

Christians like Michael Bruce may well be "cheerful" when standing on the brink of the grave, because they are there on the " verge of heaven." The bright side of death, of which their faith assures them, is as real as the dark side before which men have so much reason to tremble.

The poor man of our Lord's parable was carried when he died into Abraham's bosom. When Stephen was surrounded by the murderers who . were thirsting for his life he looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. When Paul was anticipating a speedy martyrdom, he said, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me in that day."

Stephen and Paul, honoured as they were, had no privilege in this matter of dying which does not belong to all who are in Christ. The glory of God which Stephen saw on the other side of the shadow of death which was gathering around him, is still there. The crown which Paul anticipated, he tells us expressly, belongs equally to all who love the Lord's appearing. And not a few of Paul's sayings point to the brightness of the other side of death. "All things are yours; whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours.' "We are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord: we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be

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