making melody in our hearts unto the Lord, or has it been, after all, only an artistic performance, a refined gratification of the senses?

We need thus to examine ourselves, and watch unceasingly lest that which was meant to be a help become a hindrance to us; lest we be so occupied with the accessories of worship that the spirit of worship escapes us; so dependent on outward form that inward divine aspiration becomes an irksome task, and solitary meditation burdensome; lest the eternal city without a temple, though the glory of God doth lighten it, seem to us a strange, uncongenial abode, instead of being the haven of rest to which our soul has all along, in the midst of things seen and temporal, steadily directed its course.

IX

A TOMB IN A GARDEN

"Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.”—JOHN xix. 41.

I Do not wonder at the way in which the Jewish and the early Christian fathers allegorized the narratives of the Old Testament. The Mosaic ritual was throughout an allegory, a parable, a picture wherein the Jews were taught celestial truths by means of earthly symbols; and there are many portions of sacred story which irresistibly suggest deeper meanings than those which lie on the surface. It is little wonder if these old talmudists, led on by the more palpable figures, contracted the habit of looking everywhere for figurative interpretations, fetching them from far into the narrative when they did not lie near at hand. I do not wonder at Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondence or the power it has had in furthering the adoption of his system; the doctrine that every visible earthly thing has its counterpart in the invisible, spiritual world, that in fact this outer world exists chiefly for the sake of awakening our perception of another world that lies within it and around it. The principle is so natural, so human. He can hardly be a man to whom the new-fallen snow does not

speak of purity and the boundless ocean of eternity, for whom flowers have no language and the starry heavens no speech. Plato avails himself of this principle, and a greater than he acts on it in His parables. He takes the features of Nature and the events of daily life, and reads in them truths of heavenly import. Swedenborg's error lay in confounding illustration with demonstration, relegating to quite a secondary place the teaching of the apostles for the sake of doctrines built up exclusively on a figurative interpretation of the words of scripture after a canon of his own devising.

But so long as we keep clear of that error and remember that we are only illustrating, not proving, truth which must be demonstrated on other grounds, there is no harm, but much profit in reading the scriptures with a poetic eye and treasuring up lessons which are thus suggested, sometimes even by the simplest and most prosaic portions of the sacred narrative. Our text, for instance, is a simple straightforward piece of history, but the juxtaposition of the facts recorded is so eminently suggestive, that it will be strange if some, at least, of the thoughts to which I would give utterance, have not previously occurred to your own minds in reading the passage.1

I. In the place where He was crucified there was a garden. Painters have usually depicted the crucifixion as taking place in a scene of utter desolation, on a bare and stony eminence encircled by naked hills without a tree or bush to relieve the dreariness

I have an impression that one of the leading thoughts, possibly even some of the phrases, in this sermon (preached fiveand-twenty years ago) were borrowed from an author whose name I can no longer recall.—A. H.

scene.

of the landscape. But such was not the actual There was no such correspondence between the savageness of the natural features of the spot and the terror of the tragedy enacted there. The crucifixion took place only just outside the city wall where rich men had built their villas, and the shadow of the cross fell upon a garden. The darkest deeds have often been done upon the fairest spots. The assassin's knife has gleamed in the pure moonlight stealing down upon it, betwixt the quivering leaves of the myrtle and the orange; the carnage of battle has raged with the mountains looking on serene and splendid, their summits reflected on the bosom of lake or river, soon to run red with human blood; and while man's Redeemer hung slowly dying on the cross the wind wafted past it the perfumes of Joseph's garden. The roses there did not blanch and fade away; the lilies did not hang their heads and die of shame; no blight fell upon the sycamores; the grass grew on unwithered; and balsams and aloes shed their fragrance on the evening air as though no crime of deepest dye were being perpetrated close at hand. It is only a poet's fiction that makes Nature weep over man's sins and sorrows; and at times we have felt it almost cruel that she is not more sympathetic. The sunshine falling on the open grave has seemed to mock our grief; the dancing daffodils and nodding buttercups have been an offence to us; and like the poet, we would fain have silenced the birds that sang so blithe and gleesome while our hearts were so heavy.

And yet, surely it is well that man's sin and man's sorrow have no power to blight and blast the scenes

they fill; well that we cannot with a wayward wish dress the world in gloom to match our griefladen hearts; well that when some crushing blow descends on us, it leaves the fair face of nature untouched, and many a sweet spring of joy undried.

"In the place where Christ was crucified, there was a garden;" and close by us in our deepest sorrow most often there is something that God has set to soothe, to comfort, to assuage the bitterness of grief, and gently prepare the way for a return of lost delights. That Joseph at the moment when he saw Jesus expire on the cross cared nothing for his garden, I can well believe. He only thought of it because of the new tomb that was there. If his feelings were at all like those of the rest of Christ's disciples, he must have been on the verge of despair. Here was a blow to his brightest hopes, an undermining of his faith. He had trusted that this Jesus had been the Messiah long promised to the fathers, He that should have redeemed Israel: but nowwhat was he to think? His friend and his religion struck down at one fell stroke, what mattered it to him whether he had a garden or not. And yet,

when that dark day was over, when he had seen the end, and gone home and slept his broken sleep, and the Sabbath sun shone down upon that garden of his, making the dewdrops glisten on the grass and flinging broad shadows from the oaks and cypresses across its greenery, can you not fancy this same Joseph pacing slowly up and down the garden walks, sadly indeed, but with a calmer sadness than that of yesterday, tranquillized by the subtle influences