some laborious calling, render it impossible for them to come forward in public ; and so they live and die comparatively unknown. Yet the last day may show an astonished world that some of these very people, like Joseph, honored Christ as much as any on earth, and that their names were written in heaven. After all, it is special circumstances that bring to the surface spe- cial Christians. It is not those who make the greatest show in the Church, who are always found the fastest friends of Christ.
We learn, for another thing, from these verses, that there are some servants of Christ whose latter end is better than their beginning. The case of Kicodemus teaches that lesson very plainly. The only man who dared to help Joseph in his holy work of burying our Lord, was one who at first " came to Jesus by night," and was nothing better than an ignorant inquirer after truth. At a later period in our Lord's ministry we find this same Nicodemus coming forward with some- what more boldness, and raising in the Council of the Pharisees the question, " Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth ? " (John vii. 51.) Finally, we see him in the passage before us, ministering to our Lord's dead body, and not ashamed to take an active part in giving to the despised Naza- rene an honorable burial. How great the contrast be- tween the man who timidly crept into the Lord's lodging to ask a question, and the man who brought a hundred pounds weight of myrrh and aloes to anoint His dead body ! Yet it was the same Nicodemus. How great may be a man's growth in grace, and faith, and knowl- edge, and courage, in the short space of three years.
We shall do well to store up these things in our minds, and to remember the case of Nicodemus, in form- ing our estimate of other people's religion. We must