And so our dreams get disappointed, and their disappointment is often the road to their fulfilment, for Jesus Christ was answering James' prayer, 'Grant that we may sit on Thy right hand in Thy kingdom,' when He called him to Himself, by the brief and bloody passage of martyrdom. James said, when he did not know what he meant, and the vow was noble though it was ignorant, 'we can drink of the cup that Thou drinkest.' And all honour to him! he stuck to his vow; and when the cup was proffered to him he manfully, and like a Christian, took it and drank it to the dregs; and, I suppose, went silently to his grave. But the change between his ardent anticipations and his calm resignation, and between his foolish dream and the stern reality, may well teach us that, whether our wishes be fulfilled or disappointed, they all need to be purified, and that the disappointment of them on earth is often God's way of fulfilling them for us in higher fashion than we dreamed or asked. So, brethren, let us leave for ourselves, and for all dear ones, that question of living or dying, to His decision. Only let us be sure that whether our lives be long like John's, or short like James', 'living or dying we are the Lord's.' And then, whatever be the length of life or the manner of death, both will bring us the fulfilment of our highest wishes, and will lead us to His side at whose right hand all those shall sit who have loved Him here, and, though long parted, shall be reunited in common enjoyment of the pleasures for evermore which bloom unfading there. 'And so shall we ever be with the Lord.' PETER'S DELIVERANCE FROM PRISON 'Peter therefore was kept in the prison: but prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God for him.'--ACTS xii. 5 (R.V.) The narrative of Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison is full of little vivid touches which can only have come from himself. The whole tone of it reminds us of the Gospel according to St. Mark, which is in like manner stamped with peculiar minuteness and abundance of detail. One remembers that at a late period in the life of the Apostle Paul, Mark and Luke were together with him; and no doubt in those days in Rome, Mark, who had been Peter's special companion and is called by one of the old Christian writers his 'interpreter,' was busy in telling Luke the details about Peter which appear in the first part of this Book of the Acts. The whole story seems to me to be full of instruction as well as of picturesque detail; and I desire to bring out the various lessons which appear to me to lie in it. I. The first of them is this: the strength of the helpless. Look at that eloquent 'but' in the verse that I have taken as a starting-point: 'Peter therefore was kept in prison, _but_ prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God for him.' There is another similarly eloquent 'but' at the end of the chapter: