RABBI MIER AND HIS TWO SONS

Whoso hath found a virtuous wife hath a greater treasure than costly pearls." Such a treasure had the celebrated teacher, Rabbi Mier, found. He sat the whole of one Sabbath day in the school and instructed the people. During his absence from his house his two sons died, both of them of uncommon beauty, and enlightened in the law. His wife bore them to her bedchamber, laid them upon the marriage bed, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the evening Rabbi Mier came home.

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"Where are my two sons," said he, " that I may give them my blessing." "They are gone to the school," was the answer.

"I repeatedly looked round the school," he replied, " and I did not see them there."

She reached him a goblet, he praised the Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and again asked:

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'Where are my two sons, that they, too, may drink of the cup of blessing?" 'They will not be far off," she said, and placed food before him that he might eat.

He was in a gladsome and genial mood, and when he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him:

"Rabbi, with thy permission, I would fain propose to thee one question." Ask it then, my love," he replied.

"A few days ago a person intrusted some jewels to my custody, and now he demands them; should I give them back?"

"That is a question," said Rabbi Mier, "which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What! wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to everyone his own?”

"No," she replied; "but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting thee therewith." She then led him to their chamber, and stepping to the bed, took the white covering from the dead bodies.

"Ah, my sons, my sons," thus loudly lamented the father-" my sons, the light of mine eyes and the light of my understanding. I was your father, but ye were my teachers in the law."

The mother turned away and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand and said:

"Rabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted to our keeping? See, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord!"

"Blessed be the name of the Lord!" echoed Rabbi Mier," and blessed be his name for thy sake, too! For well it is written, 'Whoso hath found a virtuous wife hath a greater treasure than costly pearls; she openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness."

"NOT BUILT WITH HANDS"

A city never built with hands, nor hoary with the years of time-a city whose inhabitants no census has numbered a city through whose streets rush no tides of business, nor nodding hearse creeps slowly with its burden to the tomb-a city without griefs or graves, without sins or sorrows, without births or burials, without marriages or mournings-a city which glories in having Jesus for its King, angels for its guards, saints for its citizens; whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise.-Rev. T. Guthrie, D.D.

I SHALL GO TO HIM

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Recall one of the most touching incidents in the life of David. While his child was sick, he exhibited every token of distress, but when it was reported to him that life had departed from the little body, his whole demeanor changed, so. that his servants in surprise, said, What thing is this that thou hast done? Thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive, but when the child was dead thou didst rise and eat bread." (II. Sam. xii., 21.) The answer of the afflicted king was a model one, expressive of anxious care and prayerful effort while there was the slightest thread to hang upon, of resignation when all earthly hope was gone, and of a decided assurance of union in the world to come: "While the child was alive I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him but he shall not return to me."

"I shall go to him."

Language more pertinent could scarcely be found to indicate David's belief that death was not an eternal separator, but that when he, too, should die, he should meet with his child beyond the grave.

This record was written under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.-Rob't M. Patterson.

BE NOBLE

We must be nobler for our dead, be sure,

Than for the quick. We might their living eyes.

Deceive with gloss of seeming; but all lies

Were vain to cheat a prescience spirit-pure.
Our souls' true worth and aim however poor,

They see who watch us from some deathless skies
With glance death-quickened. That no sad surprise
Sting them in seeing, be ours to secure.

Living, our loved ones make us what they dream;
Dead, if they see, they know us as we are.

Henceforward we must be, not merely seem.—Arlo Bates.

Blessed are they that are homesick, for they shall come at last to the Father's house.-Henrich Stillings.

SALL WE KNOW EACH OTHER?

Heaven is not a solitude; it is a peopled city, a city in which there are no strangers, no homeless, no poor, where one does not pass another in the street without greeting, where no one is envious of another's minstrelsy or of another's more brilliant crown. When God said in the ancient Eden, "It is not good for man to be alone," there was a deeper signification in the words than could be exhausted or explained by the family tie. It was the declaration of an essential want which the Creator in his highest wisdom has impressed upon the noblest of his works. That is not life-you do not call that life— where the hermit in some moorland glade drags out a solitary existence, or where the captive in some cell of bondage frets and pines unseen? That man does not understand solitude.

Life, all kinds of life, tends to companionship, and rejoices in it, from the larvæ and buzzing insect cloud up to the kingly lion and the kinglier man. It is a social state into which we are to be introduced, as well as a state of consciousness. Not only, therefore, does the Saviour pray for his disciples, "Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory," but those who are in that heavenly recompense are said to have come "to the general assembly and church of the first-born written in heaven." Aye, and better than that, and dearer to some of us, "to the spirits of just men made perfect."

The question of the recognition of departed friends in heaven, and special and intimate reunion with them, Scripture and reason enable us to infer with almost absolute certainty. It is implied in the fact that the resurrection is a resurrection of individuals, that it is this mortal that shall put on immortality. It is implied in the fact that heaven is a vast and happy society; and it is implied in the fact that there is no unclothing of nature that we possess, only the clothing upon it of the garments of a brighter and more glorious immortality.

Take comfort, then, those of you in whose history the dearest charities of life have been severed by the rude hand of death, those whom you have thought about as lost are not lost, except to present sight. Perhaps even now they are angel watchers, screened by a kindly Providence from everything about, that would give you pain; but if you and they are alike, in Jesus, and remain faithful to the end, doubt not that you shall know them again. It were strange, don't you think, if amid the multitude of earth's ransomed ones that we are to see in heaven we should see all but those we most fondly and fervently long to see? Strange, if in some of our walks along the golden streets, we never happen to light upon them? Strange, if we did not hear some heaven song, learned on earth, trilled by some clear ringing voice that we have often heard before?-Punshon.