If following Him openly involves sacrifices, the sacrifices will be sweet, so long as our hearts look to His dying love. All love delights in expression, and most of all in expression by surrender of precious things, which are most precious because they give love materials which it may lay at the beloved's feet. What are position, possessions, reputation, capacities, perils, losses, self, but the 'sweet spices' which we are blessed enough to be able to lay upon the altar which glorifies the Giver and the gift? The contemplation of Christ's sacrifice--and that alone--will so overcome our natural selfishness as to make sacrifice for His dear sake most blessed. I beseech you, then, look ever to Him dying on the Cross for each of us. It will kindle our courage, it will make our hearts glow with love, it will turn our silence into melody and music of praise; it will lead us to heights of consecration and joys of confession; and so it will bring us at last into the possession of that wondrous honour which He promised when He said, 'He that confesseth Me before men, him will I also confess; and he that denieth Me before men, him will I also deny.' THE GRAVE IN A GARDEN 'In the garden a new tomb.'--JOHN xix. 41 (R.V.). This is possibly no more than a topographical note introduced merely for the sake of accuracy. But it is quite in John's manner to attach importance to these apparent trifles and to give no express statement that he is doing so. There are several other instances in the Gospel where similar details are given which appear to have had in his eyes a symbolical meaning--e.g. 'And it was night.' There may have been such a thought in his mind, for all men in high excitement love and seize symbols, and I can scarcely doubt that the reason which induced Joseph to make his grave in a garden was the reason which induced John to mention so particularly its situation, and that they both discerned in that garden round the sepulchre, the expression of what was to the one a dim desire, to the other 'a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead'--that they who are laid to rest in the grave shall come forth again in new and fairer life, as 'the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to bud.' To us at all events on Easter morning, with nature rising on every hand from her winter death, and 'life re-orient out of dust,' that new sepulchre in the garden may well serve for the starting-point of the familiar but ever-precious lessons of the day. I. A symbol of death and decay as interwoven with all nature and every joy. We think of Eden and the first coming of death.