of tenderness which ought to have been theirs. But through
all the unrequiting and resisting of its love, the heart of Jesus still
remained gentle as a mother's, rich in its power to love, and sweet in
its spirit.

This is one of the great problems of true living,--how to keep the
heart warm, gentle, compassionate, kind, full of affection's best and
truest helpfulness, even amid life's hardest experiences. We cannot
live and not at some time suffer wrong. We will meet injustice,
however justly we ourselves may live. We will find a return of
ingratitude many a time when we have done our best for others. Favors
rendered are too easily forgotten by many people. There are few of us
who do not remember helping others in time of great need and distress,
only to lose their friendship in the end, perhaps, as a consequence of
our serving them in their need. Sometimes the only return for costly
kindness is cruel unkindness.

It is easy to allow such unrequiting, such ill treatment of love, to
embitter the fountain of the heart's affection; but this would be to
miss the true end of living, which is to get good and not evil to
ourselves from every experience through which we pass. No ingratitude,
injustice, or unworthiness in those to whom we try to do good, should
ever be allowed to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. Like
fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tide flows,
but which when the bitter waters have receded are found sweet as ever,
so should our hearts remain amid all experiences of love's unrequiting,
ever sweet, thoughtful, unselfish, and generous.

CHAPTER X.

JESUS AND THE BETHANY SISTERS.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.
TENNYSON.

The story of Jesus and the Bethany home is intensely interesting.
Every thoughtful Christian has a feeling of gratitude in his heart when
he remembers how much that home added to the comfort of the Master by
means of the hospitality, the shelter, and the love it gave to him.
One of the legends of Brittany tells us that on the day of Christ's
crucifixion, as he was on his way to his cross, a bird, pitying the
weary sufferer bearing