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for the Holy One, blessed be His name, has heard my prayer that we should find Thee and Thou us.' Peter forthwith, with the help of the other two, who had let their oars rest idly on the water, turned the boat so that it lay alongside the one from Magdala. Jesus now rose, the mother sank on her knees, but the sick woman tried with all her might to break away, and to throw herself into the water on the far side of the boat. The boatmen, however, and John, who had sprung over, held her by the arms, while her mother buried her face in the long-plaited hair of her child. Her tears had ceased to flow, she was lost in silent prayer."

When she looked on Jesus her whole body was violently convulsed. As Jesus fixed His eyes on her, His look seemed to break the sevenfold chain in which she lay bound. Her convulsions ceased; she became quiet, her face became calm, the wildness of her eyes left her, and profuse sweat burst from her brow and mingled with her tears. The healed one sank down on the spot where her mother had been praying, and muttered, with subdued, trembling words, to Jesus, "O Lord, I am a great sinner; is the door of repentance still open for me?"

"Be comforted, my daughter," answered He, "God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; thou hast been a habitation of evil spirits, become now a temple of the living God."

The mother exclaimed,-" Thanks to Thee, Thou consolation of Israel!”

Jesus continued," Return now quickly to Magdala, and be calm, and give thanks to God in silence."

This attempted Gospel supplement, by an able, uninspired author, gives us an interesting creation of his fancy, and shsow, too, how very weak all efforts to imitate the matchless style of the Bible must appear.

Mary Magdalene was for centuries taken to be the same woman as the "great sinner," who anointed our Saviour and washed His feet with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7: 36-50). Her name has from this fact been given to the many institutions for fallen women. Great as the blessed fruits of these Magdalene hospitals have been, it has come to be justly questioned whether this theory is

not incorrect. "She whose name was mercifully spared has borrowed a name that is emblazoned in the saddest and noblest charities of Christendom. And yet at first sight nothing would seem easier than to separate them. The one is of no certain city; the other of Magdala. The one is a nameless and sudden apparition, 'a moment seen, then gone forever'; the other is always mentioned by name, and becomes a constant follower of the Lord. The one is pure; the other impure. The one is healed of a mental disease; the other is cleansed from moral taint. The one is the companion of honorable and pious women, and assumes a public place beside the Saviour; the other shrinks into a privacy that shuns the public gaze.

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Not only are these well-marked distinctions, but each has a sufficient history of her own. There was no need to find a preface for the Magdalene's, nor a close for the sinner's. Each is rounded off and complete. For the poor woman that wept at Simon's, that story is all we care to know. She had sinned, and was forgiven. Let the happy life pass into friendly obscurity. Let her go in peace,' and let the music of that peaceful heart steal out like the nightingale's song in the twilight and from the shade. As for the brave and tender woman that watched the sepulchre, her life does not commence for us till Christ has swept the chords of it with His wonderful words, and the devil has left her free to minister to Him who is the devil's lord. But somehow the two have grown together into one, and art and legend have helped in the confusion, and century has passed down the tradition to century, till it has entered into the very heart of the Church. However it has happened, associations have gathered around the union too deep to be altogether displaced. Hospitals will still be raised for the worst of human maladies, and bear the Magdalen's name. Correggios and Titians of the future will paint the Magdalen's penitence; a Magdalen will still stand for the most pathetic type of a woman's travail and sorrow; and frailty, shame and dishonor will still fling their shadow on the Magdalen's life. are to conceive her as she appears in the Scriptures, we must release our minds from these powerful associations of centuries."

If we

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The pious ministry of woman shrinks Him, among whom was Mary Magfrom ostentatious parade. The trum- dalene." It was a long weary journey pets of popular applause are never afoot, from sixty to seventy miles. sounded for her as for man. Her many Again they go along to minister to Him. gentle ministries performed amid the They are with Him as He passes through privacies of the family, and the bearing Jericho, Bethany, and over Olivet. Amid of comfort and hope to the suffering, the whirl of festive excitement at Jeruremain unreported by the press. With salem, and the schemings of the Jews to uncomplaining meekness, and often with arrest Him, Mary Magdalene could unrewarded zeal, she goes about doing have been with Christ but little the last good to Christ in the person of His few days. But along with the other needy and afflicted people. The humble women, through what anguish must she group of Galilean women, who min- have passed! istered to Christ in their way, performed as great a Gospel service as did the apostles. Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the mother of James the Less, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and many others, ministered to Him of their substance. It is said that Jesus "went throughout every village and city, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God; and the twelve were with Him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, which ministered to him of their substance." (Luke 8:1-3.)

Not all of these women followed Christ from place to place. Some, like the sisters at Bethany, were needed at home. Only those who had few or no pressing home duties to perform, and possessed special aptitudes for this kind of service, were called to the itinerant work. They evidently were persons of considerable culture and of some means or "substance." With willing minds, yet doubtless often with weary bodies, they walked many miles, with Christ, from place to place; their inventive love and womanly tact ever devised plans to render Him comfortable. Now perhaps in procuring and preparing food, then making or mending some garment, but ever intent to accord Him their tenderest and most helpful sympathy, joining Him in many a prayer, breathing the heavenly atmosphere around Him, and all the while experiencing how much more they received than they gave. At length they start with Him on His last journey; when "many women followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto

At length the sentence goes forth. The day of crucifixion has dawned. The narrow streets of the city are thronged with a stream of curious and cruel people on their way to Calvary. Will these Galilean women venture among such a ribald mob! Surely, this is no place for women. Come what may, they will be near their Lord at all hazards. Somewhere in that crowd the timid group try to press along, perhaps in sight of their insulted Lord, His face inexpressibly sad and covered with blood, His exhausted body sinking under the weight of the cross. On Calvary they perhaps tremblingly stand on the edge of the multitude. Perhaps they hear the hammer strokes on the spikes as they are driven through His hands and feet, and every stroke pierces their hearts. At length they see the Saviour's bleeding form lifted above the crowd, and the cross put in its place. To the last they keep their place, in sight of the agonizing, bleeding Saviour. They hear His cries of anguish, and see Him drop His head and die. Among this a group Mary Magdalene is a prominent figure, as she is in all these delicate ministries. Were these women at His burial? Very likely, and saw that His grave-clothes were procured, and with gentle hands soft'y tied the napkin around His face and laid His head properly. They saw how and where His body was laid. What now? Go home and weep? It is all over now. What can unprotected women do in a city full of such cruel people? The next day was the Sabbath. In the temple many were singing psalms who yesterday cried, "Crucify Him!" Night dews fall on the blood stains of Calvary.

Meanwhile the women go to some bazaar and buy "sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him

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"while it was yet dark." Early on the Down at the cross-roads stood the third day they go to Christ's tomb to village known as Arcady Corners." anoint His corpse. Thus must they It was a drowsy little hamlet, conlavish their fragrant love even on the taining some dozen houses and the inmortal remains of their Saviour. The evitable store and smithy, while standing grateful Magdalen, in her loving haste, to one side in a treeless, unfenced comreaches the tomb first. It is she who mon was the venerable structure known hastens back to meet Peter and John, as the "Arcady Church." Its exand, perhaps with tears, tells them, terior view was depressing; it had They have taken away the Lord." blindless windows and an uncovered Now let the men seek Him. No; she stoop, while the absence of spire gave weeps as if her heart would break. it the look of an overgrown schoolAmong this group of women the Mag- house. The paint on its sides was off dalen's name is mentioned first. She in spots, and the shingles on its roof reached the grave first. To her Christ had the appearance of having withappeared first. In the intensity of her stood the storm of years. Just north feeling, but for the gentle prohibition of of it stood a row of old lean-to sheds, Christ, she would have prematurely while on the common Widow Blivins clung to His risen body. He chose her staked her cow, and somebody's geese as the messenger to the disciples, saying, wandered to and fro solemnly gabbling "Go to thy brethren and say unto them, and cropping the scanty herbage. The I ascend unto my Father and your minister felt an ugly sinking of the Father, and my God and your God." heart, as he stood in the pitiless glare of a July noon scanning this Lord's barn. He put aside the suggestion it hinted at of unconverted pocket-books and parsimoniousness, and was fain to think it a matter of oversight and

Was ever another woman made the bearer of such a message? Where do we find such a pathetic sight as that of this woman, whose wailing love searched so eagerly for the dead body of her Lord? And all the while her tears thoughtlessness. were falling like the rain, till through He had come to Acadia from a the wailing sobs she heard a sudden growing town where he had preached sound, a tone, a word, that brought up in a handsome church, substantially all the past. There was a flash of built and nicely decorated, and had

memory that revealed Magdala, and the numbered among his hearers critical blue Sea of Galilee, and the day when He passed and healed with a word the poor demoniac, and looking up, she saw Him in that one gentle word He spoke, that old familiar Mary, to which in answer sprung unbidden to her lips the quick Rabboni."

A Slight Difficulty.

BY MARGARET H. ECKERSON.

intellects and fashionable men and women; but the incisive truths that burned in his heart and were uttered from his pulpit displeased some, who clung tenaciously to the follies of the world and yet, by a strange anomaly, desired a crown and harp in heaven when their coil of life was unwound. And so it happened that, hetwixt their desire for a more soothing gospel lullaby and his soul's "woe is me if I speak not the truth," the tie that bound them as pastor and people was severed. At a meeting of Classis some deputies from rural Acadia heard him preach, When the minister pitched his tent and were beset by a desire to have him in Acadia he was prone to judge the come and labor amongst them. Urpeople from their surroundings, as if gently they pleaded with him. As for rose-bushes must needs shelter stingless inducements, their salary could not insects, and pellucid pools gold-fishes; rightly be classed as such, and there for the place was so sequestered and were no educational advantages within peaceful, it seemed that its denizens Acadia's boundaries for the minister's must, to complete the harmony, be sin-young family, but if his Master had gularly gentle and child-like. opened to him this field of labor, he

I.

could not carelessly turn from its fields white to the harvest. So, with his lares and penates, he journeyed to Acadia.

II.

There were rejoicings amongst the Acadians upon this event, so many of them had grown so heartily tired of their previous pulpit incumbent. Few denied that he had not tried to serve them to the best of his ability for the past twelve years, but then his ability was small. Witness the empty pews, the non-accession of members, the prevailing indifference. So they made common cause against the poor little man, going softly about with his suit of rusty black and bis small, stereotyped smile. The anxiety to give bread to a numerous family and decently clothe them had grooved wrinkles in his thin face, woven nets of crow's feet at his temples. How to make one dollar do the work of two was oftentimes a distressing question that darkened his faith and clouded his mind, even in its devotions.

He saw by unmistakable signs that his influence was waning, but still strove piteously to shut his tearful eyes to the fact. The difficulties under which he labored were perplexing. Some of his members were at swords

points with others, and between the obposing factions the poor man viprated like an oscillating pendulum, anxious to offend neither, and fearful to deal plainly with them concerning the pettiness and lack of Christian love that gave birth to and nourished the discord. Meantime his life was embittered, and in his timid efforts to please both and keep himself out of trouble, he quite laid himself open to misinterpret: tion of motive and was called unreliable. Vainly he strove to breast the current, while he clung with the tenacity of a feeble nature to the skirts of an unwilling congregation. But the man in him was not extinct, for when at last continued complaints came to his ears and he heard that by his "hanging on" to the church he was robbing it of life, he rose equal to the emergency, resigned his call and went forth with a deeper, more childlike faith in the Father he tried hum

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decisively, "and one as can see through 'Yes, yes, Lizzie," said Mrs. Hart

folks!"

Hart.

"Yes, that's just it, Miss I says to Box only yesterday, says I, 'Elder, as a church we need such a man to see through Harriet Cox, and set her down in a Christian way once fur all !'"

"Just so, Lizzie; I do hate to see anybody, specially a minister, taken in a bundle of contraptions. If somebody now would only open his eyes and tell domineerin' creetur she is, on the him what an onchristian, purse-proud,

start!"

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and the season of rural festivities for
the young.
But the one important
event, barring weddings, was the annual
Donation party.

"I b'lieve into donations," said the thriving owner of the store at the "Corners." "Yes," he continued, rubbing his oily palms, "the gospill must be supported!" Backed by the knowledge that at such times he always gave a dozen yards of bleached muslin, to be used in the manifold exigencies of his minister's family, he felt free to expatiate on the subject.

"Just the same as we always do," answered Mrs. Cox. "Some of us must be sure to bring a roast turkey, and there ought to be three or four biled hams."

"Folks ginerally calculate to eat considerable at sich times," said Mrs. Hart," and the more there's left, the better it is fur the dominie's folks. Mrs. Rames used to set great store by what was left. What is it you're goin' to say, Miss Box?" A look of intelligence passed between the two women, that Mrs. Cox's black eye caught. "Them two has hatched up some plan, I'll be bound," was her mental conclusion."

"Well, ladies," began Mrs. Box, "what I want to say is this: A week ago Friday night I was to Jordanville to Elder Greg's donation party. He's the new Methodist minister there, I suppose you know. Everything went off bee-yutiful, and what I was going to speak of particilar, they had an oysterstew that everybody liked amazin'. I don't know how many I heered speak about that stew. Now, some of us hev "I bin thinkin' the matter over, an' we think 'twould be a good idee to hev an oyster-stew to our party." There was a visible start. Common as are these luscious bivalves in Gotham, they were a rare treat in Acadia then.

"That it must," said father Possum, thinking of the barrel of smallish potatoes already sorted out for his gift, "and I guess the most on us kalkalate to do our share!" Mrs. Gilham, an elderly widow, who was buying "a pound o' your middlin' tea" at the counter, nodded her astute head. She always made it a religious duty to attend the donation party, eat a generous supper, and convey home ample portions of cake, in return for which she left a pair of knitted blue yarn mittens to keep warm the clerical fingers. think, to give what is useful is best," she said in her shrill treble. "Exactly, madam," said Silas with his benevolent smile, "my sentiments exactly. Yes, gentlemen, Mrs. Gilham has hit the nail squarely. Can I sell you anything more this morning, madam?

Old Amos Tupper, the chief sot in Acadia, who was sitting lazily by the stove with his frowsy old head bent, had a sudden inspiration to speak. "Say what you will," he quavered, "parsons is fortunit men, a salry allers comin' in steady without their havin' to dig an' delve fur't, and folks besides allers ready to give to 'em out of their own little basket and store. I wish to the Lord I was a minister !"

"You preach a pretty good sermon just bein' what you are," said the widow austerely. His jaw fell, he winked dismally at Silas and subsided into his usual vacuity.

IV.

The time having been set for the donation, a bevy of women met at Mrs. Hart's to arrange matters. "What shall we bring, generally speakin' for the supper?" asked some one.

"I, fur one, would just like to know who ever is goin' to pay to feed a hungry crowd with eysters ?'' queried Mrs. Gilham.

"Mr. Box, of course," answered Mrs. Cox, loudly, "bein' she wants 'em, she must mean to supply 'em; as for the coffee-." Mrs. Box crimsoned. "They at Jordanville" she began. "As I said about the coffee," went on Mrs. Cox, as if Mrs. Box had no existence, "I will give two pounds of the best Java-in fact, we only use the best, and some one must give another."

"As I began to explain when somebody broke in on me," said Mrs. Box, with decision, "they at Jordanville paid for them oysters out of the donation money."

"We'd best have eysters," said Mrs. Gilham, "there's no sense in letting them Jordanville Methodys get the best o' us!"

A pretty way to do things," said Mrs. Cox. "Now I say, ef Miss Box or

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