The story of the paralytic man is fraught with comfort also to those in sorrow for loved ones afflicted either in body or in mind. It is terrible to watch sufferings which we cannot relieve, to seek aid from physicians but to find that their utmost skill is exerted in vain. Which of us has not known the wearing anxiety, the sickening suspense, when a precious life is at stake? Oh! Let us not then rest on earth, and put down our loved burden in despair. We must "go up higher," we must carry our friend upwards on the strong arms of prayer, we must lay him at the feet of the Saviour. The Son of Man hath still power to say, "Arise, take up thy bed and walk." Still more earnest should be our efforts when the sickness of him for whom we pray is that of the soul—the sickness of sin. Bodily health and strength and beauty may be united with deadly spiritual paralysis. Some seem as if they would not—could not—come to the Saviour; they have no power to rise, they are chained down by the cares or pleasures and follies of the world; when others are pressing in to hear God's Word, they remain in peril without. Let us, as it were, carry those who will not or cannot walk, let us bear the burden on our hearts. God is trying our faith and our patience. Have we clambered the outward stair, have we toiled to uncover the roof—to remove as far as we can the obstacles which divide the paralyzed soul from the Lord? And then, using the bands of love, the "cords of a man," have we gently placed our burden even at the feet of our Heavenly Master? He has still power to say to the diseased and paralyzed soul, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," and to bid it arise to walk in newness of life, to tread in the paths of holiness, to run with vigour that blessed race of which Heaven itself is the goal! [Illustration] [Illustration] XL. The Cross. IN the olden times when legends and traditions, like parasites mantling a tree and hindering its healthy growth, had appeared well-nigh to choke gospel-truth while meant to adorn it, the day of the supposed discovery of the true cross was made a festival; * its name was given to province and city; and fragments, however small, of what was deemed so inexpressibly sacred, were esteemed amongst the greatest treasures of princes. Satan would be well pleased to see adoration paid to pieces of wood, if he could so draw away the minds of the pious from contemplation of the true cross, as it is preserved for believers in the Bible alone, to be touched only by Faith as she repeats the words of St. Paul, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." * "'Invention of the Cross,' an annual feast solemnized on the 3rd of May, in memory of Helena's (the mother of Constantine) finding the (supposed) true Cross of Christ deep in the ground on Mount Calvary, where she erected a church for the preservation of part of it." _English Encyclopædia._