THE ARRIVAL OF THE MASTER

crutches, a bee Kghting on tfae page of yonr book— who kncms whom He may aend ? ^

For Amiel, it was the sight of three butterflies ; for Moses, the sun setting behind a thom-bush ; for Linnaeus, a flame of mountain-gorse ; for Jésus, a dove hovering over the tamarisks by Jordan's bank.

WonderfuI ! The doors tliat were closed stand open. Yet how slight a tfaing it is.

The upturning of a pabn ? The curve of a lip, an eyelid ? Nothing.

Nothing tfaat can be seoi with the mortal eye or heard by the ear, nothing that can be deûnitely thought, spoken, or written in a book —

Yet the doors that were treble-bolted and barred, and the doors weed-overgrown and with msty old hinges,

Fly open of themselves.*

C arpenter never seems to weary of asserting this promise, which is the old eschatological prophecy of the New Testament, " Ye know not the day nor the hoiir when the Son of Man cometh/' in a new setting :

That day — the day of ddiveranoe — ^shall corne to you in what place you know not ; it shall corne, but yon know not the time.

In the pulpit while you are preaching the sermon, behold ! suddenly the ties and the bands — ^in the cradle and the coffin, the cerements and swathing-dothes — sbslL drop off.

In the prison One shall oome ; and the chains which

» T. D., p. 176. « Ibid., p. 38.