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The same night in which He was betrayed.—1 Cor. xi. 23.

His night was asked and answered in the

gloom The trembling "Is it I?" This night

the Feast,

Last, first,-last Passover, first EucharistMade doubly consecrate the Upper Room. Therefrom this night He passed unto His doom. Blood-red this night 'gan glow the mystic East What time fell earthward from the Victim-Priest The drops that marked Him for the Cross and

Tomb. This night that visage marred and smitten knew In a kiss its foulest stain. This night in fear Fled all who loved Him : and it deeper grew As the loud oaths of Peter smote His ear. O JESU-Hunan sorrow, Grace Divine !-Was ever grief, was ever love, like Thine !

He said, It is finished : and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.

ST. JOHN xix. 30.

his is the hour of darkness and of light.

Here Satan crowns his primal work of ill :
Here God consummates His'redeeming will.

This is the very blackness of the night,
Yet as the deepest gloom precedes the bright
Absolving dawn, so on this shrouded hill
Doth God through Satan's deadliest hate fulfil
His Love's long promise, bring sweet Hope to sight.
( deathful sin ! the sinner needs must die !
So dies Emmanuel in the sinner's stead :
Oh see, oh hear, the gloom, the passion-cry!
Lo—“It is finished :” and the Christ is dead.
Dead ! then live, Christian ! Won from Death and

Hell,
Behold thy life in dead Emmanuel.

And there was Jary Magdalene, and the other Vary, sitting over against the spulchre.

St. MATT. xxvii. 61.

HE setting of a blood-red sun in calm

After a day of storm; the passionate

roar

Of blast and flood and thunder heard

no more :

Only a sobbing, like a funeral psalm,
Of winds that stir the tempest-shaken palm
To weary sighings; on the beaten plain
The falling of some last still tears of rain
That with soft sadness sink like drops of balm.
Then the grey twilight : then a gloom more deep :
Then utter silence of most solemn night,
And all things are not, unto sound or sight,
So seeming deathful is this awful sleep.
Yet, Soul, thou hast thy promise of the morn;
Be still and commune, till the Light is born.

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when

it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

ST. JOHN xx. 1.

ORNING ! the utter gloom did wane to

grey ; Then waned the grey to silver like the

gloom : And that o'er wider heaven to such a bloom That all the landscape cast its grief away, And singing toward the orient hailed The Day! In all the mighty champaign was no room For e'en one mournful memory of that tomb Wherein so late, through night so long, it lay. So didst Thou rise, O Light of Light! No eye Beheld Thy first dawn from the grave, and few Were those elect who in Thy vision knew The earnest of their immortality. But from that morning there shall grow ere long The whole world's glorious Day and Easter song.

62

Peace be unto you.—St. John xx. 21.

Never now,

OY weds with Peace to-day. This morn

ing's power Is strong o'er night for ever. Since once that Sun hath raised its regal

brow, On faithful souls may ghostly shadows lower To overwhelm. So in the deepening hour Of even came the Light. To doubt and fear Did sweet assurance and repose draw near, And Hope grew full from feeblest bud to flower. Then but one word ; but with it came surcease Of dread without and inner haunting pain; Then, with those healing stripes in view, again Fell that divinest benison of “ Peace.” So enter, Lord, my dark heart's inmost room, Pass the barred door and smile away the gloom !