-- - where we are going, and what we shall be, or what we may meet with. The result of all such attempts to forecast the future is pain to ourselves. We spread the net of imagination into the vast and unsounded depths of the future, we haul it to the shore of the present, and find it is not filled with what will profit, but with venomous reptiles and insects that fasten upon us exhaust the lifeblood, and sting to the quick the heart of him who gathers them. Sufficient for the day, we are told in Scripture, is the evil thereof; but we will not be satisfied with this we try to prophesy, we seek to master the future, we would ascertain what it will be, we enter upon forbidden territories, and in such experiments we meet, as God has warned us, difficulties, and thorns, and trials, and rough roads, and stern perplexities, till we return to the present baffled and depressed, but often taught useful lessons. The past is not ours, for it is gone-the future is not ours, for it has not yet comethe present with all its responsibilities and duties is ours, let us seize it, and pray that God would sanctify us for it, and it to us, for Christ's sake. It is also a very singular fact, that all contingent calamities, which we fancy that we foresee, or which, in this curious penetration into the future, we anticipate, are always ten times worse in the anticipation than they are ever found to be when the reality comes. Every one knows that any thing that he anticipated as dreadful even in the future, was not so bad when it actually came within the horizon as it seemed to be when he stood on tiptoe on the loftiest pinnacle, straining every faculty and sense, if perchance he could discern it from afar. The shadow of an evil that we anticipate, projected into the present, is vastly blacker, darker, and more portentous than the original itself. The right way is to let to-morrow's ills sleep quietly until to-morrow's sun shall wake them. Present obligations are enough to occupy our whole attention today; and to-morrow's difficulties can be met in to-morrow's strength; but if we drag tomorrow's difficulties into today, we have a double day's work for a single day's strength, and it is no wonder that we are depressed, distracted, and cast down. Let us never forget that the too curious question of the too curious Peter, which is just what I am now endeavoring to explain, was thus justly and profitably answered, "What is that to thee? follow thou me." This gloomy foreboding of the future, which Abraham felt, and for which the prescription is given, "Fear not, I am thy exceeding great reward," is, as I have said, bringing into today more than God designs for today. Every man has plenty to occupy him for every day, but if you insist upon bringing the fears of future evils that never may occur into the duties of the present, then you add to the burden that you have to bear, but you do not add to the strength that is to bear that burden. God gives you today's bread for today's nutriment, and today's strength for today's burden; and if the burden of today be very heavy, or too heavy, you may ask God either to lighten the load, or, what is as good, to make your strength adequate to bear it; but if you bring to-morrow's load and today's load both upon your back at once, you have no promise that God will give you strength to bear that double burden, you have entered into a province which is not yours, and having done so, you must taste the bitterness of eating forbidden fruit, and reap, in your own individual case, a portion of the catastrophe that Adam reaped for us all when he ate of that tree and brought death into the world, and all our woe. What is the reason, that in anticipating the future, like Abraham, we are so alarmed? Let us try to ascertain, and it is a very profitable investigation, why we see dark shades, not brightening prospects, when we try to look into the future. One reason is, that we judge of the future atheisti cally. We exclude from it the element that will give it its right tone, and to its incidents their joyous music, and to its occurrences their true sweetness, that is, God our Father. Look upon the future without God, and you must gaze upon a future without one ray of sustaining hope. But God's name is, "I am, and was, and am to come." In other words, God will be just as truly in the future as ever he was in the past. God will be in all the minutes and cycles of its chronology, in all the lights and shadows that shall chase each other over its face. His voice will be heard in the sounding of every hour, his footfall in the turning of every street, his providential presence will be in the first bud of spring, and in the last rose of autumn; at its bridals, its births, and its burials; in all the great things that peal upon it like thunder, in all the little things that come into it as whispers. Whatever the future shall be, God will be there. In the pouring out of every vial, in the opening of every seal, in the sounding of every trumpet, in the future of the Apocalypse as in the past of Genesis, God, our God, will be our shield and our exceeding great reward. Thus, if we look at the future filled with God, inlaid with Deity, and anticipate his presence there as truly as we have realized it in the past, we may gaze on the future, in which God is, but, unlike Abraham, we need not be afraid. Another reason why we are sometimes depressed when we look into the future, is that we look in the hazy light of our own sinfulness. Abraham, in a previous passage, had told what was, substantially, untrue respecting Sarah; and when we are conscious of sin as he was, and look into the future through the telescope that is darkened by guilty reminiscences, the shadows of our own sins are projected into the future, and its sunniest spots look dark, because our sins obscure our vision of them. We are sinful, and we conclude the future will therefore be sorrowful; and yet it need not be so. Instead of carrying our sins into the future, and seeing it in their shadow, let us carry our sins to the cross of Christ, there to be forgiven; and having left our load where we are warranted and welcome to leave it, let us go with elastic footstep and hopeful heart into all the duties, responsibilities, and trials of the world that stretches still before us. Another reason why we are sometimes depressed when we look into the future, is that we judge of it carnally, that is, we think that is bad which we feel to be pain, and that is necessarily good which tastes to us as pleasure; and yet pain is not necessarily evil, and pleasure may not be good If on looking into the future we think all pain calamity, and all pleasure blessing, and missing the latter, we find the former, we must be depressed and cast down; but if we feel, what kings upon their thrones and priests by their altars have acknowledged, that it was good to have been afflicted, if all experience shows how difficult it is to hold the full cup, and how unprofitable it is to dwell in constant sunshine - for we cannot bear too much light, like exotic plants, we need shade to enable us to live truly- we shall see it is good for us, it has been in the past, and it will be in the future, that we should bear a cross to prepare us for a throne, and tread many a rough and flinty road in our journey to the better country. Let us always remember, that if there were too many flowers in our path, and too sweet music overhead, if all things were just as we would carnally wish them to be, we should forget that this is not our home, and that we are pilgrims and strangers, looking for a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Another reason why we judge unfavorably of the future, and are depressed by the anticipation of it, is that we judge very hastily. We are all very rash and precipitate in our judgments. Hasty judgments are rarely sound ones. Moral conclusions upon moral subjects are, as first formed, generally most correct, but judgments formed upon an intellectual subject rashly, are rarely to be depended upon. Often when we look into the future, we see a glimpse of it, and from that glimpse we estimate the whole. We see a page of the book, and foolishly we pronounce upon the merits of the work. We see the laying of the foundations, and conclude that the building will be a prison, when in fact it may be a palace, or a cathedral, whose spires will sparkle in rising and in setting suns. We see a part, and we conclude what the whole will be. The morning comes in clouds and we prophesy that it will be dark at noon, whereas the clouds in the morning are often the heralds of a bright mid-day. We must not, therefore, in the words of the beautiful hymn, judge the Lord by feeble sense, but recollect that often under the cloud there are the smiles of a patient and a loving God. The poet says, therefore, very beautifully, "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, "Deep in unfathomable mines He treasures up his bright designs, "Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, "Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, |