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vicissitudes which, most of all, appeals to human sympathy, and evokes the nobler qualities of our inner nature. No other tableau, no other scene enacted on life's stage so entirely absorbs the actors and so deeply moves the spectators. It may be the death-bed scene, the parting of the living from the dying; or by the graveside, the last sight of the dead. It may be the heartbroken wife or mother's good-bye to the criminal on his way to imprisonment, or the gallows. It may be the young soldier patriot's hurried farewell to wife and little ones, as he answers his country's call. Whichever it be, it is sure to be inexpressibly solemn and touching. The poet Homer makes such a scene — the parting of Hector and Andromache — the subject of his most famous passage — while, in the Bible, who does not love to turn to the book of Samuel and ponder over the parting of David and Jonathan! Who does not understand the evangelist's silence regarding the first parting of Jesus and Mary! Because, namely, he was loth to intrude on such a sacred scene and words were inadequate to describe it. David loved Jonathan as his own soul, and their parting was like tearing the soul from his body; but Our Lord loved His twelve Apostles each better than His soul — He lived twelve lives in them and He died twelve deaths when they parted. You remember that passage of the Gospel where, pointing to His Apostles, He says: " These are My Mother and My brethren and My all." His love for them, therefore, must have been an intensified mixture of the love of a boy for his