there are in life,-men coming in the darkness, figures appearing in visions, voices heard in dreams, events forcing themselves upon religious attention.There are many practical messengers coming to the cry of the heart every day: messengers of poverty, pain, bereavement; men requiring intellectual help, spiritual comfort, commercial direction: children needing to be trained, nurtured, directed, stimulated in right paths, protected from diabolical assaults." He that hath ears to hear, let him hear."-Providence itself is a great messenger and a great message.If we choose to play the fool we can deafen ourselves to every voice and blind ourselves to every token: we can go up and down the earth saying that we hear nothing, see nothing; that we are practical, and that we pay no attention to the emotions of the soul, the peculiar actions that stir the inner being. -That certainly is one way of living; it is the poorest, meanest way of all; it is the way of the flower that has but a small root, and because there is no deepness of earth it will soon wither away. He who dwells in daily communion with God fears no messenger who can come to him, even with evil news.-The fear of God takes away all other fear. The surprise of the saintly soul is but a superficial or transient wonder; it does not affect the fountain and reality of his faith." If thou forbear to deliver him that is drawn unto death, God will judge thee; if thou sayest, Behold, I knew it not, he that searcheth the heart will bring thee to the judgment seat."-To the man who listens there is many an appeal; to the Iman who is wakeful there is many a passing vision from which he can learn abiding truths.-A messenger has come to every one of us to declare the everlasting gospel. He flies abroad in the midst of heaven; he proclaims his truth regardless of age, condition, or

There are silent friends. We must not suppose that all our friends are human. Oftentimes the greatest friend a man can have in sorrow is silent yet ever-eloquent Nature.-The mountain can do more for some men than can be done by the most elaborate controversy. God himself called upon Jacob to look up and behold the host of heaven, and draw lessons from that great army of stars.-The Psalmist also was accustomed to turn his eyes in the same direction that he might learn great life-lessons and be soothed and comforted by the quietness of Nature.But these were men who came to Job, and they showed their wisdom by their silence. What can words do in the

supreme agony of life?-Do not let a man suppose that he is useless because he cannot talk largely and fluently.Men may imagine that if they could go forth well-armed with arguments and gifted with high eloquence they would soothe and bless the world. Nothing of the kind.-Never forget the potency of silence, the magic of wordless sympathy.-There is a touch of the hand that conveys impressions to the mind which no words could convey. There are also deeds so subtle and delicate and far-reaching in their meaning that they comfort the heart without disturbing the ear or calling for any audible reply. It is a blessed experi ence to be forced to silence.--Silent prayer is sometimes the most effectual of all. So long as we can express our

selves fluently in words our fluency may but represent the shallowness of our feeling. Only those should speak who know what to say.-The best-meant word, if uttered in a wrong tone, may exasperate the sorrow it was intended to soothe.-How good are right words! How pleasant and useful is divinelyinspired speech!-Sometimes a man is encouraged by seeing his friends overwhelmed by the grief which he bears: it touches his own sense of heroism; he feels that he has to exemplify certain virtues and graces which are supposed to characterise religious life.-Yet there is a time to speak.-If we cannot speak directly to the grief we would comfort, we may speak generally, and so include the one specific object with the neces sities of the whole world.-Men may not like to be addressed directly and personally, yet they may not object to listen to a general appeal which includes their own particular case. When grief silences men, oppression should never take away their speech, nor should wrong-doing of any kind.-We are never to sit down beside the sin of the world silently because we see that the sin is very great; the greatness of the sin should stir us into protest, denunciation, and then to gospel-preaching.— The majesty of God should be treated with silent reverence, yet there must be breaks in that silence, for we cannot withhold the hymn of praise, the ascrip. tion of adoration, and the declaration of filial trust and faithfulness." The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him,"-there is a period when silence is the best worship, but there is also a period when speech is an imperative duty.-What self-humiliation a man must experience who has allowed an opportunity to pass away without denouncing wrong, protesting against evil, and making declaration of the right under trying circumstances. In addressing grief, we can

never be wrong in adopting spiritual language. Always have recourse to the holy Book for words of sympathy and condolence; they are venerable, they are lofty, they are full of reverence and tenderness, and they have been well tested in many generations.-We should at least begin with the language which we find in the Bible; if by-and-by we care to add a word of our own, or enlarge the meaning of the divine word, so be it; but every human heart responds in the hour of its agony to the solemn eloquence of Holy Writ.-The Bible was written for men who are in grief; it approaches the soul without intruding upon us; it is eloquent without being noisy; it is majestic without being overpowering. In the darkest hours of our life the Bible is the best witness to its own inspiration.

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This is the same in all human experience. It is easy to carry the burdens of others. It may be quite delightful to speak to men who are suffering as to the way in which they should bear themselves in the hour of trial.-He can best sympathise who has most suffered. It is one thing to see sorrow at a distance, and another to admit it into the innermost room in our own house and live within it night and day. -These are the times, however, when we can show our true spiritual quality. -So long as the affliction was at a distance we merely talked about it, but when it came near us we felt it, and under the agony of our feeling we showed what our souls were really trusting to.-Well-borne trial is the finest argument that can be set up on behalf of the grace of God.-The promises of Scripture are not so many jewels to be worn as a necklace; they

are to be appropriated, and to become part of our very selves, giving us strength, patience, dignity, so that even the smell of fire shall not pass upon us when we go through the furnace of trial. He can preach best who has had largest experience, it may be even of ill-health, loss, disappointment, and bereavement. He also can read the Bible best who has passed through similar experience.--Every trial that comes to us furnishes an opportunity | through which the soul can show the fulness of the grace of heaven.-If Christian men fall down in trial, what are un-Christian men to think of them and of their faith? If the very sons and princes of God quail in the day of adversity as do other men, what, then, has their religion done for them? By their depression, their fear, their want of light and hope, they not only show their own nature, they actually bring discredit upon the very reiigion which they profess. How did such men come to take up with such a religion? What possible motive could they have for identifying themselves with a faith which, beyond all other faiths, is marked by heroic characteristics?— Cowards must not be numbered with those who follow the banner of the brave. Some men have been greater in affliction than they have ever been in prosperity. Their friends did not know them as to their real quality until they were called upon to carry heavy burdens, and to be tried by perils in the city, and perils in the wilderness, and perils on the sea, and perils amongst false brethren,-it was amidst such cesting perils that the true quality of the spirit was disclosed, and that many a man who was thought timid and frail discovered himself to be a very giant in the family of God.There is another aspect of the case which enables us to address men who are sensitive themselves whilst encourag

ing other men to be noble and brave under assault.-The men referred to exhort others not to take heed of neglect or insult or dishonour; they say those who suffer from such attacks ought to be above them, ought not to resent them, ought to treat them with moderation and perhaps with occasional contempt but how is it when the very same attacks are made upon themselves? Then how energetic they are in repelling them, how sensitive to every unkind word, how strong in their selflove, how violent in their self-conceit ! -Example is better than precept.-To exhort another man to be magnanimous is not half so good as to be magnanimous under trial of any kind.

"Now a thing was secretly brought to me."-JOB iv. 12.

Things which are so brought are often the best things.-They are not meant for the bodily eye, which can see but imperfectly, but for the vision of the soul, which, where the character is good, is strong and clear.-We call the sum of our experiences, "impressions," "feelings," "impulses," "tendencies; " we are afraid to characterise or define them by some positively religious name. -Who, for example, dare say he was inspired? Who has sufficient religious boldness to say that the Holy Spirit fell upon him, and taught him this or that, or awakened his faculties to such and such an exercise?—Tho e who are believers in the Bible ought to have no hesitation in using religious tems for the definition of religious impressions. Inspiration is always a secret communication.-The Spirit of God steals, so to speak, upon the spirit of man, suddenly, in darkness, in out-of-the-way places, and, communing with him, transforms him into a new being, increasing his faculties both in

number and strength, and clothing him with new and beneficent power.— When a good impulse stirs the heart, better trace it to a high origin than to a low one. When we are moved in the direction of self-sacrifice for the good of others we should instantly seal the action of the Spirit with the name of God, and thus give it sanctity and nobleness, and turn it into an imperative and gracious obligation. When a man supposes anything has been secretly brought to him from heaven, it was not meant that it should be locked up in his own heart; the very man who says that a secret message was delivered to him now begins to speak of it and to relate it all in graphic detail.-We should repeat this experience.-Who has not had conviction of sin ?-Who has not known the mysterious action of conscience?— Who has not felt deeply and irresistibly that this world is not all, but that upon the horizon of time there gleams the beginning of eternity?-We should speak of these better impulses, these religious exhortations and ecstasies; we should never be ashamed of them, but hold them as in our personal trust for the benefit of the common family of man.-Great ideas were never meant to be merely personal possessions; "There is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty "—intellectually and spiritually as well as financially. "He that watereth shall be watered also himself."-Make no secret of your best ideas, your noblest impulses, your highest enthusiasms; tell them to others; the very stating of them may be as the declaration of gospels, the revelations of the unseen kingdom of Christ. Of course the wise man will not throw his pearls before swine; he will study circumstances, opportunities, and conditions; the very spirit that brought the secret thing to him will indicate the right time and place under which he is to make revelations of

what he has seen and known and handled of the word of life.-Some gospels are to be preached to solitary persons; other gospels are to be thundered as it were from mountaintops, and to be made known in all their majesty and grandeur and beneficence to the whole family of mankind. -The heart at once identifies messages which have been brought from heaven; there is no disguising or perverting such messages so as to obliterate their identity. Even when but poorly delivered there is something about them which declares a heavenly origin.-This is emphatically so with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.-Even when men are tempted to ridicule it, they seem to be trifling with a temple, to be bringing into disdain the noblest tower ever built upon the earth and reaching to heaven.-There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.-Perhaps even the commonest soul knows true music from false there is something in it which claims a species of kinship with the man and awakens him into a new and blessed consciousness.

"I have seen the foolish taking root." JOB V. 3.

This calls us to the curious sights in human life.-There are sights that are surprising, delightful, unexpected, overwhelming. The sight which most puzzles the good man is that the foolish take root, and that the vicious should prosper. A good man can make something of almost every other sight in the world, but this overwhelms him with dismay. It seems to be against the fitness of things; it seems to discourage all attempts at virtue; it seems to offer a premium to vice.-This was the difficulty of Asaph; he says his feet had well-nigh gone when he beheld the

prosperity of the foolish and listened to the revels of the wicked, for there were no bands in their death, they had more than heart could wish, their eyes stood out with fatness.-This is not an enemy who is bearing witness against Providence, it is a good man who is setting down what he has seen as a simple matter of fact.-He would not have been so surprised if he had seen the foolish flaming for a moment like a rocket, making a dash of display which perished in its own action; nor would he have complained perhaps if the foolish had made an occasional success in life : the thing which troubled him was that he had seen the foolish taking root, as if they were going to abide on the earth and come to maturity of power.-We must not ignore the difficult facts of Providence, but we must not limit our view to facts as we see them, or as they lie upon the surface; though they may be all that we can see with our bodily eyes, yet we are to bring our religious reflection to bear upon the case. The world is old enough now to afford us a basis of reasoning and inference respecting all appearances, combinations, and phenomena generally.-The root-idea of the Christian religion is that God is against all wickedness, and that in the long run he will overwhelm it and bring it to its appropriate punishment.-Let us be well grounded in that fundamental principle. If we could for a moment doubt the reality of that principle our whole faith would be gone.-We speak it reverently when we say that if God could cause any man to succeed simply because the man was wicked, his claim to human confidence would be destroyed. -Here, then, lies the great basis-principle, that the eternal God is against evil, and is pledged to the extinction of wickedness. In view of this principle, what becomes of all apparent success and root-taking, and honour, and influence, and pomp? These things are

but indications that the judgment will be of equal magnitude, and will come even more suddenly than the success is supposed to have come.-Meanwhile the difficulty is a great one, and there are circumstances under which men need all their deepest religious convictions to sustain them in the presence of providences which seem to be dead against the assertion and progress of truth and justice.-Sad is the case of heathen nations; sadder still is the condition of nations which are partially Christian, and which turn Christian civilisation itself into a means of extending their wickedness.-Sometimes we wonder how God can sit in the heavens and behold it all; we are troubled that he does not awake, so to speak, and come down in judgment that cannot be mistaken, and rectify relations that are thrown out of course.-Many a grief of this kind we have to hide in our own heart. Yet why should we hide our griefs in view of providences which we cannot understand? Let us go back to history. Let us be faithful to the interpretation of great breadths of human experience, and in all cases it will be seen that, however mysterious the process, God has in the end vindicated goodness and repelled from the throne of righteousness those who would overturn its pillars.-Man of God, take heart; the trial is no doubt hard; things have happened in one day which in human wisdom would have happened exactly in the other way, and we are dismayed, confounded, and put to silence, when we see how great is the grief of honest souls.-All we can do is to recur to history, to pray for the consolidation of our faith, for the increase of our spirit of patience and long-suffering perhaps the longer God is in coming as a great light, the brighter will be the glory, the more blessed the vision, when it does arise to reward our weary waiting.