"Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One. * * * * I am not proud--meek angels, put ye on New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest On mortal lips, 'I am not proud'--_not proud_! Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son, Albeit over Him my head is bowed, As others bow before Him, still mine heart, Bows lower then their knees! O centuries That roll, in vision, your futurities My grave athwart! Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep Watch o'er this sleep! Say of me as the Heavenly said, 'Thou art The blessedest of women!' blessedest, Not holiest, not noblest--no high name, Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame, When I sit meek in heaven!-- For me--for me-- I often wandered forth, more child than maiden, Among the lonely hills of Galilee, Whose summits looked heaven-laden! Listening to silentness, that seemed to be God's voice, so soft, yet strong--so fain to press Upon my heart, as Heaven did on the height,-- And waken up its shadows by a light, And show its vileness by a holiness! Then I knelt down, as silent as the night, Too self-renounced for fears; Raising my small face to the boundless blue, Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears! God heard _them_ falling often--with his dew." Think of the lot of Christ, and remember how closely another heart beat in unison with his heart--how nearly parallel her life ran with his life. Pass from the manger to the Cross, and those two scenes are enough to suggest the outlines of her experience during that eventful interval. Listen to the words--"Woman, behold thy son"--and to the disciple, "behold thy mother." Think of what followed--the joy at Christ's rising to dwell in visible presence with his own, and after his ascension to dwell with them in his witnessing Spirit. Among those who remembered the promise: "Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world," there was one who added a mother's love to a disciple's faith, as in the coming of the Comforter to her soul, she received her new birth into the kingdom of God, through him who had his birth on earth from her. Confided as she had been to the disciple whom Jesus so loved, a guest in his household, the constant companion of the growing circle of believers, how could she be without great influence on their faith and fellowship? When she passed away, a new light rose for them in the heavens. Their religion was not a code of moral precepts, or a set of theological propositions, but a gospel of speaking facts and living words. Their religion was Christ and all that is Christlike. Their heaven was no ethereal abstraction, no pantheistic merging of spirits in infinity; but the home of true souls--the mansions of the Father opened by Christ to all the faithful, and surely unto her who guarded his infant weakness and wept over his dying agonies. On earth and in heaven the blessed mother stood to them for the ideal of true