WH

HETHER there be more of joy or sorrow in human life is a question on which very different opinions are entertained. In answering it, many circumstances must be taken into account, and none more than the quantity of human misery which we admit within our observation. There was once an Eastern king who, desirous that his eye might never fall upon the wretchedness of his subjects, barred the entrance of his palace even to the light of the sun, and beneath the glitter of variegated lamps spent his days in jollity and mirth. And so might any one spend his days, could he be content to live by lamp-light, and contrive to exclude from his mind all that afflicts himself and others. That is what I cannot do. I survey the foes which, in countless hosts within us and without, wage war with human happiness. I reflect on the heaps of disappointed hopes that lie behind, and on the no less numerous fears of future evil which brood before, every member of our race. I learn from experience that there is scarce a family, scarce even a single individual, who is not burdened with some peculiar care, or wounded by some secret sorrow, according to the words of the poet

"In this vain world the days are not all fair

To suffer is the work we have to do;

And every one has got a cross to bear,

And every one some secret heart-ache too."

I think upon the sufferings which men inflict upon each other, and upon all the heavy strokes which they receive from the hand of God; and when I then direct my view to what they usually consider the compensation-I mean their so-called pleasures and enjoyments—it always appears to me as if the thousands who exult over the rich delights of life were wilfully cherishing a delusion which, in a sober mood, and had they but leisure to be alone, would vanish, and give place to the confession that they were not happy. And when I further reflect on the kind of consolation with which they try to sweeten the bitterness of life and death-those paltry schoolboy rhymes, by

which they fain would sing to rest their hearts that will not rest, such as

and many of the same sort-O children! I exclaim, was ever a conflagration stamped out with the foot, or a falling avalanche arrested by the hand?

Of a truth, no clear-sighted man can doubt for a moment that this earth, on which hours of tame pleasure must needs be drowned in weeks of bitter anguish, is no longer a paradise. Deny it if you can, ye who involuntarily pay homage to the truth and are constrained to sing—

Where grows the rose that has no thorn?

My child, I cannot tell;

No rose e'er blossomed here on earth,
That had not thorns as well.

Nay, have not even the sages of the Gentile world sung to us "That every good vouchsafed to mortals is accompanied by two sorrows"? and as for the attempt to calm the troubled heart by alleging that without the thorns the roses would give us no pleasure, I never could persuade myself that that was true. For how comes it, then, that we dream of a hereafter where the roses have no thorns, and where the garlands never wither? If the light could not gladden the heart of man without its attendant shadow, the shadow of this earth would necessarily stretch across into the land of the blessed.

No others may pass over the tears and shadows of this earthly life unconcerned-I cannot. Without belying my inmost convictions, I must assent to the words of the son of Sirach, that "Great travail is created for every man, and an heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb till the day that they return to

the mother of all things." I must admit that the same heavy yoke weighs upon him "that weareth the purple and a crown," as upon him "that is clothed with a linen frock." For though earthly misery, like sin, takes various shapes, not without reason did the ancients give wings to Care, for it is present in every place.

ance.

And I know of no key to the deep wretchedness of Adam's race save that which the Scriptures supply, when they tell us that the thistles and thorns first entered the earth with sin, and shall never be wholly extirpated save in that new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.1 No doubt this is a truth which it is very hard to confess. Admit it; and then every thorn upon the flowers of earth has a spiritual and unseen sting which wounds more sharply than that which pierces from without. And then, too, every thorn becomes to us a preacher of repentOh, how deep a humiliation this is, and how revolting to the flesh! Are the cares which infest the earth already so many and bitter; and yet must I feel in every one of them the additional sting of sin? It is even so; but in the very fact that so it is, behold, O man, the badge of thy nobility! Here is a proof that misery and pain, the crown of thorns and the bitter cross, appertain no more to thee than they did to thy Saviour. Our suffering is our bondage; and when "the glorious liberty of the children of God shall come," 2 they shall also be relieved from the thorny crown and the bitter cross. We shall then have grown to full age: for the present we are minors, and need the rod.

"It is a good thing," says the prophet, "for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth."3 The days of our life on earth are to us all a time of youth. And though "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Yes: afterwards that peaceable fruit of righteousness shall we likewise reap.

1 2 Peter, iii. 13; Rev. xxi. 1.

3 Lam. iii. 27.

4

2 Rom. viii. 21.

4 Heb. xii. II.

And all the less can we avoid being humbled under tribulation, in respect that the heaviest strokes which fall upon us are those inflicted by our fellow-men. "Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, and let me not fall into the hand of men," 1 was the prayer of the saints of old. Strokes of that sort serve to remind me of my own sin. Even the son of Sirach, in describing the misery of life, speaks of "anger, zeal, envy, contradiction, and variance;" and these, in fact, are the chief of the stripes with which man scourges his brother. But if earthly affliction of every sort makes us long for an appeaser of all strife," much more does this! It is a perpetual discourse upon the theme, how greatly we stand in need of a Prince of Peace to reign over us.

When I think what must have become of me if I had passed all my life without having ever felt the weight of the divine hand, I shudder. Oh, how much good tribulation has done me! How it has rooted up the weeds and lopped off the rank shoots of sin in my nature; and how, beneath its influence, has my longing after a Saviour grown more and more intense! And when I further reflect how forgetful of God men are even now, overwhelmed although they be with so vast an ocean of tribulation and misery, I scarcely venture to figure to myself what they must have been without it. Would they ever have thought at all of an appeaser of discord, seeing that even in their present state they imagine they can dispense with His help?

O Lord, I refuse not Thy correction, for it is just withhold not Thou from me Thy strokes; they are full of love and goodness. My soul is well pleased that Thou hast beset the ways of men with thorns. Oh, may all the thorns of earth fulfil their end, and discourse to me of the great heart-ache which sin has brought upon humanity! O Lord, we have merited this so bitter wrath of Thine, for great has been our transgression. But Thou hast proclaimed that "Whoso confesseth his sins and forsaketh them shall have "2 and

1 Ecclus. ii. 18; 2 Sam. xxiv. 14.

mercy;

2 Prov. xxviii. 13.

as I now confess my sins unto Thee, oh let me obtain the mercy which Thou hast promised.

THE SOUL.

Where can the rose that has no thorn be found?

Not on this earth of ours;

But, tell me, shall earth s roses always wound

The hand that plucks the flowers?

THE LORD.

I gave the rose at first a harmless boon,

The thorns are thine alone;

But ponder well the truth they teach, and soon
Their pain will all be gone.

3.

One Thing is needful.

Men blindly trifle this brief life away,

As thoughtless children treat their toys at play,
Which, prized at first, then spoilt, they cast aside
As ebbs the fit of fancy, like the tide.

We live without an aim, nor heed at all

The strict account for which the Judge will call.

Yet if the creature with his God contend,

Can any question how the strife must end?

LUKE, X. 41, 42. "And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her."

THE

HERE is nothing which more clearly shows the deceitfulness of sin, than the fact that men so seldom inquire for what purpose they have come into the world. Sometimes,