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HOURS OF THOUGHT.

I.

The Tides of the Spirit.

LUKE iv. 16.

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read."

WE cannot wonder that something in his look,-some visible flush of inward life,-fastened the eyes of all upon him. For to his human feeling, which could nowhere assert a greater right than there, the moment was overcharged with a certain sad intensity. Since last he stood upon that spot, a change had passed upon him a light, long struggling with the clouds and often drowned in a golden haze of mystery, had cleared itself within him he was no longer at his own disposal, or free to rest upon the trodden paths; but the sacred dove was ever on the wing before him, and now alighted on the synagogue of Nazareth, and there, where he naturally fell into the attitude of docility, left him to speak the word of supernatural power. Never is it so

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