son may be a valiant and mighty man. Three flat miles between Geneva and Chamounix said they would lie there no longer, so many travellers had called them dull and tame, so they went off in a huff, nobody knows where; but Mont Blanc himself bowed his crowned head and remonstrated, owning that but for them he himself would hardly have been known one mile away from home. So the three peevish miles came back again, proud to be a roadway to the monarch of hills. You know Enoch, but you know nothing of Jared; you know Moses well, but how many men amongst you can tell me his father's name?

It would seem that in Enoch we come to the first really good man, of any fame, in Biblical history. I do not except Abel. In fact, what we know of Abel is next to nothing. Enoch reaches the point of renown in godliness: he walked with God three hundred years at least; his walk was on the high hills, so high that he simply stepped into the next world without troubling Death to go through his long dark process. 'He was not, for God took him.' As if he had walked so near that God opened the window and took him in; and we, too, might pass in as easily if we walked on the same sunny heights. But we are in valleys and pits, and God must needs send Death to dig us out and send us to heaven by a longer road. Solemn indeed is the word, 'Enoch walked with God'; it means so much; there was a serenity about the man unlike all other quietness; a tender light made his face shine, and in his voice there was a tone, rich, pensive, joyous, altogether wonderful in its combination of humility and triumph. To walk with God is to pray without ceasing; to walk with God is to be absolutely free from care and independent of human judgment; to walk with God is to be in heaven.

After Enoch we come to Methuselah. He too, is well known, but for nothing but length of days apparently; yet as a matter of fact he ought to be known for something much more highly distinguished. It is wonderful how oddly and whimsically fame is gained: Methuselah is famed because he was the oldest man, and Samson because he was the strongest man; another is known because he can walk upon a tight-rope, and another because he can swim across a channel. If it were in my power to preach the most splendid sermon ever uttered by mortal lips, not a newspaper in the world would take the slightest notice of it; but if I put up an umbrella in the pulpit or tore the pulpit Bible in two, many a paragraph would report the eccentricity. A splendid sermon would be thought of as interesting only to the few, but an act of folly would be regarded as of universal interest. Thus it is (though it may not seem so) that things get into history. Robertson, of Brighton, was hardly known in

his own town during his lifetime, whereas another clergyman in Brighton dressed himself in a coat of many colours and made quite a figure in the principal newspapers. Any man living can have a world-wide notoriety to-morrow, can have his name telegraphed throughout the whole range of civilization, and be the subject of editorial comment throughout Christendom. Everybody knows that Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty-nine years, but nobody knows that but for you two orphan boys would never have had a chance in life. No preacher has a really world-wide name, known in slums and garrets, backwoods, steamboats, thoroughfares, and palaces, who did not in some way get it through contemptible speech.'

Now what is that other thing for which Methuselah ought to be better known than for his great age? Tell me without looking at your Bibles. I give you a moment for recollection. Now tell me you cannot? I knew you could not! He was the grandfather of Noah; that is his glory, not his mere age! You cannot tell what your boy may be, or his boy: so keep yourself up to the mark in all mental health and moral integrity, lest you transmit a plague to posterity. It may be that Nature is only resting in you; presently she will produce a man!

Methuselah was the father of Lamech, and Lamech was the father of Noah. Here we come once more upon the highlands of history, and the air grows keener. Though Lamech had many sons and daughters, yet his hope glowed most brightly when he looked upon Noah. Truly there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.' A father of such insight deserved a son of such renown. did not know the full meaning of his own words, and therein he was like the rest of us; for oftentimes upon our small words God puts meanings which our hearts had never conceived, as out of one grain of corn He brings a return of sixty-fold.

He

Precisely the same thing we have in this chapter we find in the catalogue of the names of the early disciples of our Lord. We know Peter and James and John. But how little, as compared with them, do we know of Thomas and Matthew and Philip, of Lebbæus, and Simon the Canaanite! Yet they were all members of one company, and servants of the same Lord. We speak of men of renown, forgetting that their renown is principally derived from men who have no renown themselves! Unknown people make other people known. The hills rest upon the plain ground. Besides, there is a bad repute as well as a fair fame: Judas Iscariot is known as widely as the Apostle John! Be not envious of those who have high place and name; could we know them better, perhaps we should find that they long for the quietness of home, and sigh for release from the

noise and strain of popular applause. Happily, too, we should remember that a deed may be immortal, when the mere name of the doer may be lost in uncertainty. Such deeds are mentioned in the Bible; they are told everywhere as imperishable memorials, though the names of the doers have escaped the attention of the busiest watchers.

So closes this apparently uninteresting chapter. Let me say that the hour will be dark in which we pine for things romantic at the expense of a quiet and deep life. Christianity teaches us that no child is to be despised, no work is to be considered mean, and that suffering may have all the honour of service. Woe to us when we can live only on stimulants! When the house is accounted dull, when only sensational books can be endured, when music and drama and painted show are essential to our happiness, life is gone down to a low ebb, and death is at the door. Let us do our quiet work as if we were preparing for kings, and watch attentively at the door, for the next comer may be the Lord Himself.

CHRIST ON CALVARY.

MUNKACZY'S NEW PICTURE.

FROM THE TIMES' PARIS CORRESPONDENT.

I SAW to-day at Munkaczy's studio the new picture which the great modern master is now finishing. The subject of it is Christ on Calvary.' This solemn and touching picture, which will be exhibited here at Easter in a room constructed specially for it, will certainly produce as great an impression in the artistic world as his Christ before Pilate.' The two pictures will be exhibited here alongside each other, and the public will be able to follow the sequence of the master's artistic thought. The figure of Christ on Calvary is slightly larger than that of Christ before Pilate. Though the new picture is not yet quite finished, its transcendent merit is already visible.

The painter depicts the scene where the Saviour has just expired. The sky is black with clouds and streaked with lightning, and beyond the horizon at Jerusalem the veil of the Temple is seen, rent in twain. Jesus Christ, pale in death, and inclining forwards, has given up the ghost. The Centurion has dropped in terror beside the Cross. Mary, the mother, on her knees, is bathing in tears her son's feet. Mary Magdalen, her golden hair hanging loosely over her shoulders her face in her

hands, is also on her knees before the Cross. John, overwhelmed with grief, is on the other side, and a Jewish woman looks on, a sad spectator of the Crucifixion.

The terrified crowd is descending the hill. Some Roman cavalry look on ashamed. One of the executioners, a man of brutal mien, shouldering the ladder and axe in hand, is carried along by the multitude. Some Jews, terror-stricken, have their eyes riveted on the Cross. Two rabbis are discussing as they descend. One of them is proving the necessity of the sentence; the other, the older one, looks sombre and alarmed. For him an everlasting crime has been committed, and you can see that he is thinking of what that crime will cost his race's descendants in blood and suffering. In front, a man of sinister, false glance, and haggard, desperate eye, is fleeing faster than the rest. If Judas had not already hanged himself, never would a human figure have better represented the despair of that traitor. Perhaps the painter has committed a voluntary anachronism, for on seeing this maddened fugitive one cannot help exclaiming, "That is Judas!'

The three crosses are in the foreground at the right extremity; and the rest of the immense canvas is filled by the fleeing multitude. The sky is magnificent and sombre; and the lightning illuminates the dark clouds that hang over the mountains, the valleys, and the scarcely visible town. You see, amid the confused movement of the crowd, that it is bewildered and terrorstricken. The group at the foot of the Cross is of wonderful beauty and feeling, and the general colour is harmonious and striking to a degree which even Munkaczy himself has never before attained.

The picture is certainly one of the most perfect which have been produced for many a year, combining all the majesty of the classic schools with the modern and personal stamp that marks it of the nineteenth century. When one gazes on this picture and hears Munkaczy speak, one realizes the feelings which the contemporaries of Rubens, Murillo, or Veronese must have experienced when they conversed with those great masters who were destined to be handed down to the admiration of posterity.

I have no hesitation in saying-and I am proud to be the first to say so-that the Christ on Calvary will not afford room even for the few reservations that tempered the general admiration for 'Christ before Pilate.'

PURITY OF CHARACTER.-Our character ought not to be like that coat of many colours which the old man gave to his son Joseph, but all of one colour, pure, spotless white.-Dr. Guthrie.

THE BUSY FLOWERS.

YES, ye're awakening, ye beautiful flowers,
Touched by the breath of the spring-freshened hours;
Rousing from slumber and opening your eyes,-
Golden, hazel, and violet, and blue of the skies;
Shaking out your wee mantles, and bright-coloured hoods,
And making your homes in the fields and the woods:
So busily gay

Thro' the lengthening day,

What is it, O flowers, ye will do there, I pray?

Questioner, questioner, seek you to know
What is our part, whither summoned to go,
As we waken from slumber and open our eyes
To the kiss of the breeze, and the smile of the skies?
Much, very much, in the summer-sweet air,
Have we to do, e'en the least of us, there;
With our fairy-like powers

To make lovely the hours,

And scatter our incense as clouds scatter showers.

Ours 'tis to clothe every hedgerow with grace,
Ours 'tis to brighten each desolate place,
Ours to hide the rude ravage of years,
Ours to wipe off the winter's cold tears.

Working faultless embroidery and delicate lace,
Twining coronals, Nature's fair forehead to grace.
Bright treasures of spring,

To e'en dark spots to bring,

Gifts left in our keeping by Nature's kind King.

Ours, too, not alone to make barrenness bright;
Not alone in the meadow flower-poems to write;
But to gladden and comfort the grief-clouded heart,
And show how in beauty that, too, may have part;
To whisper to minds touched by Trouble's rough air,
Of a new-coming spring, and a life made more fair;
To open the door,

To all joy closed before,

And Hope, like a long-mourned-for child, to restore.

And ours, also ours, perhaps the dearest work found,
To minister unto the suff'rers around;

To go to the rooms where the dying ones lie,
And see them, too, smile at the smile of our eye;