universe is interested exclusively in the history of souls. How different with us! We survey life from an altogether different standpoint; and gold, culture, greatness, or pleasure is the consuming theme of our contemplation. If the celestial world is absorbed in the history of the soul, ought we not to concern ourselves far more than we usually do with the inner life? We are most attentive to worldly fortune; success or failure in social and material life is never long out of our thoughts, and we rarely pause to ask ourselves how we stand with God. The state of the soul, the movements of the spiritual life, and the rise or fall of character are recognized by us only in glimpses, yet they fill the eye of God and angels. Earth scans the surface of history; Heaven studies the soul of history, which is the history of the soul.

The final lesson we note is that the most important event in the individual life is the restoration of the lapsed soul to God. "One sinner that repenteth." He who came into the world to revalue all our values declares that the return of the prodigal son to his heavenly Father is the most momentous of all acts. Repentance means the consciousness of sin. Sin in its essence is ungodliness, the leaving of the Father for a far country. The creature divorced from the Creator, the gift severed from the Giver, here is the inmost essence of sin. He who truly repents knows that he has shut out God, substituted his own will for God's will, used God's gifts without God's blessing. "I will arise, and go unto my father," is of the very essence of repentance. Repentance means also a horror of sin. We awake to its ugliness, bitterness, shameful

ness, and peril. It is astonishing how lightly the natural man thinks of sin! He is far more troubled by a physical infirmity than by a moral fault. He will rather suffer a bad conscience than a bad tooth; he will tolerate a vile disposition, and resent a squint; he will prefer a cloven foot before a club foot. And he is far more distressed by an error in language or manners than by a breach of the higher law. A misfit in dress offends him more than his base act; a slip in grammar humiliates him more than a slip into sensual mire; a trifling breach in etiquette causes him to blush as he never does for his wickedness. In repentance all this is changed. He sees the unreasonableness, hatefulness, and wretchedness of his evil passions and ways, loathes them, and shrinks from them with shame and distress. Finally, repentance means the renunciation of the life of disobedience, and a trustful return to the heavenly Father. "They have turned to Me the back, and not the face" (Jer. xxxii. 33). In repentance we turn clean round, and look with desire upon God and His holy will. In the strength of Christ's grace, on the grounds of His merit, we return to our Father's love, house, and service.

How vividly this narrative brings out the blessedness of repentance! God rejoices. "In the presence of the angels." And we can understand His joy. The human heart is our best mirror of God; the brother's heart, the sister's, the lover's, the friend's, the father's and mother's heart. As in water face answereth face, so the heart of God is reflected in the heart of man; only turbid elements make the glorious

image dim. How, then, do we rejoice, when the lost returns! It is most human that we should rejoice, and what is most truly human is most nearly divine. Strange and blessed thought! God rejoices in our repentance unto life. The angels also rejoice. When the tide rises in the ocean, it rises in a thousand creeks and rivers; and when the sunny sea of God's blessedness swells, it streams through the celestial universe, and fresh music everywhere breaks out like the sound of many waters. But if repentance is an event to make heaven glad, is it not one to make us glad also? It is, indeed, the beginning of true peace and felicity. "Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it; shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein; for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified Himself in Israel."

What a powerful encouragement to repentance this passage affords! The penitent finds it a severe task to overcome the difficulties which lie in his path. The hostile elder brother stands for many disheartening influences. But "the morning stars" are elder brothers who stand by the penitent. "The angels laid hold upon his hand." (Gen. xix. 16.) Beautiful scene! So now, repentant sinner! if Sodom mocks, there is with you a vast world of divine, angelic, and saintly sympathy. More are with you than can possibly be against you.

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THE MERCY OF MYSTERY

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing.-Prov. xxv. 2.

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HE meaning of things and events is to us largely incomprehensible; we cannot order our speech aright because of the darkness. This fact often frets us, we feel that an injustice is being done us, we complain of the weary weight of an unintelligible world. But the text sets the matter in another light. "It is the glory of God," the wisdom and love of God, "to conceal a thing." The motive of mystery is generous, it contemplates our safety and advantage.

So far as the universe itself is concerned this is true. What we know of the world is as nothing compared with what we do not know. The secret always escapes us the secret of matter, of life, of the origin and ending of things. We ought not to be surprised that this is so. To a certain extent this mystery arises out of the greatness of God, and the necessary inscrutableness of His infinite working. A child cannot understand the higher mathematics, a peasant follow a philosophical discussion, a savage comprehend the Atlantic telegraph; and the greatest human mind cannot grasp the universe. That the

whole scheme of things can ever be known by us is absurd, for the creature can never overtake the Creator, the finite comprehend the Infinite. Yet it is true that we might know much more of the universe than we do. Why, then, does not God flash upon us the secrets for which our scientists and philosophers search with aching brain? Why does He not light up the material universe, and make clear its secret workings? "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing." Illumination is regulated by practical good, and must not outstrip moral progress. Hidden things are revealed as fast as the knowledge of them can advantage our whole being. The desire to know may be nothing more than an impertinent curiosity, a proud and delirious ambition, and Heaven concedes nothing to this inordinate speculative temper. To each succeeding age secrets are disclosed, according to its needs. and fitness. We might easily get more light than would be a blessing. Pilots object to the electric light in lighthouses because it perplexes and blinds them; a gentler, softer light is better for practical purposes. So God does not grant a succession of brilliant lights for ends of pride, vanity, or amusement. He slowly explains His works that we may be kept humble and reverent by their mysterious immensity and magnificence, and that every addition to our knowledge may be a practical good-a mental, material, moral, and spiritual blessing.

Another illustration is found in the unfolding of the divine government. Great inventions and discoveries. familiar to us were denied the old civilizations. Why did God so long jealously guard these secrets? Not