hurrying by the darkened lattice. They can form but one surmise: that,
in accordance with wont, she has betaken herself to the burial-ground to
feed her morbid grief "She goeth unto the grave to weep there." Ah!
little did they know how much nobler was her motive--how truer and
grander the solace she sought and found.

There is little that is really profitable or hallowed in visiting the
grave of loved ones. Though fond affection will, from some false feeling
of the tribute due to the memory of the departed, seek to surmount
sadder thoughts, and linger at the spot where treasured ashes repose,
yet--think and act as we may--there is nothing cheering, nothing
elevating _there_. The associations of the burial-place are all with the
humiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken
from the _earthly_ entrance of the valley, not the _heavenly_ view of it
as that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay
flowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the
bereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the
foot of the destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly
beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be
pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than
thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read
the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble,
telling of the vanity of human hopes.

Such, however, was not Mary's errand in leaving the chamber of
bereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be
crushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She sought _One_ who
would disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill
comforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven.
The music of her Master's name alone could put gladness into her
heart--tempt her to muffle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His
feet. "_The Master is come!_" Nothing could have roused her from her
profound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining
her prostrate at the sepulchre's mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium
of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the
Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to
listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given.
Is there not the same music in that name--the same solace and joy in
tha