rink in the
refreshing dews of spring; but the curse of perpetual sterility rested
on this!

He has smitten _you_ also, but it is only to _heal_! He has bared your
branches--stripped you of your verdure--broken "your staff and your
beautiful rod;" but the pruning hook has been used to promote the Vigour
of the tree; to lop off the redundant branches, and open the stems to
the gladsome sunlight. Murmur not! Remember, _but for_ these loppings of
affliction you might have effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of
mere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the
outward display of _Religiousness_, without the fruits of true
_Religion_. You might have lived and died unproductive _cumberers_,
deceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you
to linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely,
these severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, than to
listen to the stern words--"Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him
alone!" It is the most terrible of all judgments when God leaves a
sinner undisturbed in his sinfulness--abandons him to "the fruit of his
own ways, and to be filled with his own devices;" until, like a tree
impervious to moistening dews and fructifying heat, he dwarfs and
dwindles into the last hopeless stage of spiritual decay and death!

"If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what
son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?"

"He purgeth it (_pruneth it_), that it may bring forth MORE FRUIT."

XX.

CLOSING HOURS.

The evenings of the two succeeding days seem to have closed around our
adorable Lord at BETHANY. We may still follow Him in imagination, in the
mellow twilight, as He and His disciples crossed the bridle-path of the
holy mountain from Jerusalem to the house and village of His friend.

Much has changed since then; but the great features of unvarying nature
retain their imperishable outlines, so that what still arrests the view
of the modern traveller, in crossing the Mount of Olives, we know must
have formed the identical landscape spread out before the eyes of the
Incarnate Redeemer. It is more than allowable, therefore, to appropriate
the words of the same trustworthy recent spectator, from whose pages we
have already quoted, as presenting a truthful and veritable picture of
what the Saviour _then_ saw.

From almost every point in the journey, there would be visible "the
long purple wal