mains to awaken unreconciled and agitating thought, when the word of Jesus hath said in commanding power to every storm within the heart, as he spake to the foaming wave of Galilee, "Peace, be still," there can be no more sea. What long and piercing denials must come through our continual infidelity, what self-crucifixions, what agonies of bereavement and tears, to destroy these causes of disquiet for evermore. Who can say how oft he may need to be led into the garden, where he may sweat as it were great drops of blood in the wrestling of his heart, before we shall be able to say, "not my will, but thine be done." For unfallen hearts, the passage into the heavenly life, might be sweetly natural as the opening of the bud into the flower. To be made perfect through temptation and suffering, is the law for man so fallen, and his only hope. The cross is the symbol of the life of the redemption. The true heart looks up amid all its imperfections and its fears, rejoicing that this way of life is opened to its steps, though from its own unreconciliations yet, it can only travel therein at times with pained and bleeding feet. It is willing to drink the cup the Master drank, to receive the baptism where with he was baptized, that it may be also glorified with him. It welcomes the troubling angels, that it may ascend to the life where the troubling ceases, and there can be " no more sea."

Blessed are they that mourn.

MATTHEW v: 4. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted."

THAT "they shall be comforted," is the conviction of every believing heart, although everything remain an impenetrable mystery to the eye of the understanding. For when the heart once believes a Spirit of Infinite Love is reigning, the mystery of the universe can no more be a fear. It knows there can be no clashing or contradictions, in a system where everything is instinct with life through the presence of the omnipresent God. That glorious thought is proof that all things must arrange themselves in obedience to a single, benignant law. No "sparrow falls" without its notice. It numbereth the hairs of our head. There is mystery still. But it is only the mystery of an unfathomable Love. Such a faith awakens in the heart a prophetic song of coming good, whenever it perceives any apparent evil. It may often see the thick clouds lowering over us with a solemn gloom. But above them all, it is assured, are the serene, eternal stars. Nay its fervent trust almost robes the cloud in light. It feels the darkness of the night wherein we may be standing. But it always predicts the morning. As God revealed to the trusting among His an

cient people the never-failing hope of a Messiah to come, through their believing hearts, and as they sung the song of that hope amid their captivities by the rivers of Babylon, so through a similar trust He always discloses His cheering promises. That trust never hesitates to say to man when called to mourn, "You shall be comforted." For unless it might be so under the Providence of God, the heart always whispers that it would not be called to mourn. It knows not when the great issue of all this change shall be revealed. But, like the Patriarch who saw through long ages the Messiah's day, and was glad, it perceives this blessed day of peace afar, and is still.

It can only be the mystery of an infinite Love we say, when the heart actually believes a Father reigns. And in numberless particulars, man's only refuge lies in that simple trust. Over all the movements of the Eternal Providence, he finds inscrutableness and cloud. Questionings may

arise in every smallest circle within his view, no thought of his can answer. For in a world where the angel and the worm alike are messengers of the Father's will, agents to accomplish His eternal purpose, I suppose the soul may never fully understand the mission of the minutest fact, until all its relations should be seen as they appear to the mind of God. No view less comprehensive could perfectly reveal the work of each little

change, in the accomplishment of His serene and unchanging counsels. And to the child of time, this eternal thought may never come. Yet, as his lowly trust increases, the prophecy rather than the lamentation becomes the habitual feeling of the heart. And could that trust be made supreme, bringing that sweet Sabbath of rest, the rest in the soul when God has become its portion, and its home, why should we not look upon all things in simple faith, pronouncing them all to be good forevermore?

But man may repeat the text with a brighter faith than the simple prophecy of a trusting heart might suggest. It is one of the most glorious facts in this wonderful Providence, that the most cheering truths seem inseparably connected with its darker dispensations. The blessed thought we need is folded up in the feeling awakened by the trial, as the flower within the bud. God's angels do not dwell as it were apart, in other worlds of thought and feeling than those the trial naturally opens. Then might they come indeed at our earnest call, to bear us up in the time of change by their sympathizing hands. But in a sweeter mercy still, they crowd the same world to which the trial introduces us, unveiling themselves with their bright words and glance of love, to every wisely reflecting heart. "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted," was the word of Jesus. Blessed are they that

mourn, for they are comforted in that precise experience, is the idea I suppose he intended to convey. Here, as everywhere in Christ's teaching, the promise is the direct and natural result of the feeling or sentiment to which he refers. We desire to pursue one of those trains of reflection which may illustrate that delightful thought.

What indeed is the plain mission of these continual changes to the soul? Always the breaking up of one world of habitual life, through any painful experience, is designed to be the opening of another and a wider sphere of thought and feeling. It is thus for example, in the disturbing changes of early life. The youth turns away at least with a transient sadness from an early home, to new and untried scenes. But the change is only a birth into a broader life. He leaves his former home. He enters upon a world. He ends his childhood. He becomes a man. He bids farewell to narrower associations, however sweet yet narrow still, and moves amidst modes of thought and forms of life unknown before. So do broad views of nature suddenly salute his eyes, when he first climbs the hills enclosing childhood's dwelling-place, and gazes upon crowded towns, and waving forests, prospects all boundless, stretching out before his wondering view. There is an endless farewell to the days free from the pressure of deep responsibilities. But that pressure of responsibleness is the chosen means of un