and

us night and day; the ladder which Jacob saw in a vision has not been removed, it still connects heaven and earth, Angels are ever ascending and descending on errands of love and mercy.

In Bethlehem the shepherds found the Babe lying in a manger; and while they told to the Virgin Mother the wonderful story of the adoring Angels exulting in the exceeding greatness and lowliness of Him who had taken upon Him the form of a servant, the world outside the Cave went on its way, not knowing that the long-expected Messiah of the favoured people of God had come, and that the Virgin Mother, of whom their great prophet Isaiah had written, was cradling the Saviour of the world among the beasts of the stall.

Oh, proud world! what hast thou ever done for the children of God? Even

what thou didst to God Himself when He took upon Him our flesh and dwelt among us. Thou hast given hate for love, cursing for blessing, and ingratitude for mercies innumerable as the stars. Thou hast persecuted the faithful in all ages; thou hast drunk the blood of the martyrs ; thou hast tried to destroy Christ's Church, as thou didst crucify the Head of the Church outside the walls of Jerusalem. Thou hast ever hated the story of the Cross; nevertheless no chapter of it has been lost; each page is treasured in the hearts of all who like S. Mary ponder all things, written for their learning, in their hearts.

Not in a cave is the next scene of the great drama, but in a gorgeous temple, even the Temple at Jerusalem; and here thought is at once arrested and our attention called to the lesson which the

magnificence of the Temple built according to the plan of its Almighty Architect was intended to teach mankind. Truly our English Hooker has well summed up that lesson in his own quaint and forcible words, "God has nowhere told us that He likes to be served beggarly; " and no country in the world is richer in buildings which testify that the lesson which God Himself taught Solomon has been learned by the Christians of later days, than England. Her cathedrals are something more than grand old buildings; they are stately poems, lofty imaginings embodied in stone. Their foundations are deep and strong, and the superstructure is typical of the religion that was to be taught beneath their roofs. When gazing upon such buildings, the words of a poet recur to memory, and we feel that

They dreamt not of a perishable home
Who thus could build."

When those Cathedrals which stud our land were raised, men were few in number and widely scattered. Those Houses of God were built for Him and for His glory, and so the builders laid stone upon stone richly wrought with curious and significant device; higher and higher they raised the clustered columns, crowning them with rich capitals from which sprang the glorious arches and groined roof; and as they went from nave to chancel, from chancel to Sanctuary, the mind of the designer soared to a yet loftier height, and the handiwork became more elaborate, -as was meet-for there the Altar Throne of the Lamb of God was to stand when the House was builded and made ready for the presence of God.

And behind the Altar of the Lamb we

always find, in these old Churches, the Lady Chapel. The position of it seems to indicate that it was intended by the master minds which designed our Cathedrals as typical of the Blessed Virgin's hidden life on earth. They honoured her as the Mother of their Lord, and built her chapel where the first rays of the rising sun would stream through the eastern window and light up the slender marble columns and the delicate tracery with which they loved to adorn the place they dedicated to her in God's House, in humble imitation, as it were, of the Christian gifts and graces with which God adorned her.

Yet was that Chapel not open to the common gaze of all: it was built behind the High Altar; and always in that sacred seclusion there is a smaller Altar, on which

to offer that ". pure Sacrifice" of which the prophet Malachi wrote-even Him Whom