Surely this is not right. Surely the praises of the little ones are as acceptable now as they were on the first Palm Sunday. Children soon learn to understand and join in the service. I shall never forget being, many years ago, in a church where the responses were made so faintly that one might think the worshippers were afraid some one would hear them. All at once, in the midst of that cold, dying murmur, arose distinct and clear the voice of a little child saying in devoutest accents, "Good Lord, deliver us." All through the Litany the sweet little tones were heard, and it was curious to hear how others near him found courage to open their mouths. Dear friends, let us take the children to church. Let us not deprive them of their birthright. Their place is in the Sanctuary as well as ours, and they will soon learn to consider worship a privilege. They will learn to love God's house when they are young, and when they are old they will not depart from it. _MONDAY BEFORE EASTER._ _THE FIG-TREE HAVING LEAVES._ THE Lord had, as usual, gone out of the city to spend the night. He seems to have had no love for cities in general. He spent the dark hours either at Bethany, or, as is very probable, He had slept with His disciples in the open air, under the trees of the Mount of Olives. All Orientals are rather fond of sleeping out of doors, and a night on the grass, wrapped in their big mantles, is, to them, no hardship at all. But returning to Jerusalem early in the morning, He was an-hungered; and seeing a fig-tree having leaves, He came to it, if possibly He might find fruit thereon. The time of figs—the general harvest—had not yet come. But this particular tree had put on its summer dress of leaves; and therefore it was reasonable to expect that it should also bear fruit, since the fruit of the fig-tree always precedes the leaf. Our Lord might have expected to find some of the small green figs which there often come to perfection in April or May. * But the tree was barren. It had not even remaining any of the large purple fruit which hangs on till the next season. It was barren now; it had been barren the year before. And so the Lord pronounced its condemnation. "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforth forever." * NOTE.—Thomson, author of "The Land and the Book" (which ought to be in every Sunday-school library as a book of reference), speaks of eating the little sweet green figs as early as April. Is there a possibility that one of us who have followed the Church services all through this holy season may be, after all, like this fig-tree? It is possible that we may be like the empty vine described by the prophet—empty because it brought forth fruit only to itself? (Hos. x. 1.) Oh, let us look to it, lest our Lord, seeking for fruit and finding none, may pronounce against us also the awful sentence, "No fruit grow on thee henceforth forever." _TUESDAY BEFORE EASTER._ _THE HOUSE LEFT DESOLATE._