ness there arises a light, but only to terminate in darkness again, from which new light is evolved; and so on in perpetual vicissitude. The child who sat beside the fountain waiting till it should run dry, is an emblem of the human mind attempting to count Thy thoughts, O thou immeasurable One! Well might I quail at the infinitude of Thy being, did I not know that it is also the infinitude of love and mercy.

God is the fountain at which I drink,

God is the ocean in which I sink.

I gaze o'er the main, but no shore descry;
And helpless and feeble, alas! am I.

What then! Would I measure the flood immense?

No; losing of self all thought and sense,

Undaunted the awful deep I brave,

And sink and dissolve like a drop in the wave.

Thy thought, like Thy measureless being, no line

Can fathom, nor term nor bound confine.
Yet feel I no dread, for I think with delight
That Thy love is as vast and as infinite.

21.

The Lord doeth according to Lis will.

I am so sad and care-oppressed!

My friend, I well believe 'tis true;
I should be quite as much distressed,
Had I as many lords as you.
Lightning and hail, and fire and storms,
Cattle and neighbours, fowl and worms,
Of monarchs what a train!

For me I have one only Lord,

And all that host fulfil His word,
As body-guards the king obey;

And so I cast my cares away.

DAN. iv. 34, 35.

nezzar lifted

up

"And at the end of the days, I Nebuchadmine eyes unto heaven, and mine under

standing returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honoured Him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?”

So is the

spake the haughty monarch after he had experienced how heavy is the hand of Him who is the King of kings, and when his understanding returned to him. Alas! that man, the frail child of clay, whom every gust of fortune drives from his place like the dust of which he was made, should need so violent a tempest to awake him to the sense of his impotence, and never discovers that all human works and devices hang upon threads which meet in a single hand, until that hand wields the sceptre in wrath. They set to work, calculate, consult, and dispose of all things, at their pleasure, never dreaming that without the Amen from on high all they do signifies nothing, and that at any moment a voice from heaven may say, "Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought." It is true man cannot altogether hide from himself, and least of all they who possess the largest share of earthly power-I mean kings and generals-that to give checkmate and to be checkmated are not a matter of mere human skill; for while, in a thousand instances, the most subtle devices are baffled, in how many more does that which they call chance decide the upshot and the victory? In place, however, of praising and honouring the Most High, they imitate the heathen, and prostrate themselves before the dumb idol of Destiny. And for what reason? For this, as it seems to me: They cannot brook the thought that the success of their enterprises should depend upon a supreme will; for to that supreme will they would then require to subject also their decrees. They there

1 Isa. viii. 10.

fore banish from their minds the thought that all the rods of earthly power are but offshoots from the lofty sceptre which rules the world, and should therefore adopt that sceptre's laws; and thus, having severed their enactments from God, they sever likewise their successes. O fools! you may perchance contrive to bury your terrors for a holy Lawgiver, but your terrors for a righteous Judge will still wake up; and the proud self-complacency which you may now and then feel on account of some successful enterprise, has far too little honey to sweeten the many draughts of wormwood which must be incessantly drained by him who sees mere human powers and projects conflicting upon the stage of the world. Who could. bear to think that either the woof or warp of our life, the black balls or the white, were committed absolutely into human hands, whether our own or of other men? For my own part, I would rather say with the pious of former days,—

The proverb may be well believed,

'Tis good to be by God deceived.

The thought that there is a hand which none can stay, may indeed excite alarm, but only in the breast of him who is unacquainted with the heart by which the hand is governed. To such a one the unknown God is indeed no better than a cold and silent destiny. To him, however, who is acquainted with the heart of God, there is nothing more blessed than the belief in the omnipotence of His hand. Already in the Book of Wisdom we read: "Forasmuch as Thou art righteous Thyself, Thou orderest all things righteously, thinking it not agreeable with Thy power to condemn him that hath not deserved to be punished; for Thy power is the beginning of righteousness, and because Thou art the Lord of all it maketh Thee to be gracious unto all." The almighty hand in which I believe is the hand of eternal righteousness, love, and wisdom. How can I be afraid of it? Ought I not much rather to rejoice, for this very reason-viz., because the eternal righteousness, love, and 1 Wisdom of Solomon, xii. 15, 16.

wisdom is also omnipotence, and therefore can never lack the means of gloriously accomplishing whatever its council has ordained? The utmost to which the natural man can attain, when the destiny which is his idol has shivered to pieces all that was dear to his heart, is resignation—that breastplate of ice which, after all, does nothing for the throbbing heart but cool down its fever from the hot to the shivering fit-that decent sort of despair which, like a poor funeral sermon, tricks out affliction with a few apothegms, and tries to dull the smart of grief with phrases learned at school-that frigid falsehood which at the best only helps us to be willing not to be miserable when our misery is real and great. It still leaves us slaves, forced to endure the will of a master who is a stranger and unknown to us. We, however, who through grace have become children, have something better than resignation. We know Him from whom the opposition to our will proceeds, and because we know Him we resign our own will to His. In this manner, to bear the will of God becomes a meat as much as to do it. And of him who has learned that lesson, no scourge or rod can ever more make a slave, for he continues free amidst all his sufferings. Do you know the beautiful sentiment once uttered by such an emancipated child of God? "If my God does not will as I do, I will as He does, and so we continue always good friends." That is a sentiment which has wings. With it I can soar into the clouds and warble my song like the birds of the air. Let resignation, with the ice and iron about her head and heart, attempt to follow me if she can. Children, a palace of ice with its silvery frostwork is a pretty object to look at, but only from a distance; and as for inhabiting it, no one would do so for all the world.

It appears a very simple truth that a mother's lap would be a more comfortable place, and yet there have been clever persons who had a different taste. It seems to me a strange thing, and well calculated to excite reflection, that God often offers to men wholesome bread, and yet that they prefer to have a stone. He, so to speak, places truth in their very path,

so that they can scarcely avoid striking it with their foot; and yet, when they encounter it they lift their foot, and with a long step pass over it and are away. I remember reading, in the work of an able and pious Mohammedan, that there are three degrees of confidence in God. The first is that in which we trust Him as a skilful Agent who will wisely conduct our cause to a successful issue; the second is that in which we trust Him as the babe trusts its mother; in the third we submit passively to Him as the corpse does to the hand of him whose business is to dress the dead. And this last kind of confidence, he says, is the best of the three. Certainly, however, the man must have had a peculiar taste. For where an option is allowed, who would not choose to serve his God alive rather than as a lifeless corpse? All honour to the dead! I cannot pass a body wrapped in a winding-sheet without pious and reverential thoughts. But yet, so long as I am among the living, I think it better to cast in my lot with them. Who would not rather be at his mother's side than in the hands of the undertaker?

And if in the Christian community there are numbers of Heathens, and even Jews, why should we wonder that there are also Turks?—men whose taste is as much of a piece with that of the pious Mussulman as one egg is like another. For instance, did we not hear them saying during the prevalence of the cholera, "Now is the time to embrace the Turkish creed"? In it they fancy that faith attains to full vigour and the heart to true rest. And to rest the heart does attain, but it is the rest of the churchyard, and not the rest of the Sabbath. The Turk has really no advantage over the Heathen idolater. What he believes in is a torpid omnipotence, which, as it lacks the eye of love and wisdom, is nothing but the same blind destiny in which the Heathen believed, and regarded as the supreme power which lorded it over all the other deities. For this reason, too, both Turk and Heathen refuse to employ the means and appliances provided by a kind Providence as our auxiliaries in the conflict with fate. We Christians, however,