patience, seem to me personal. If I am only to grow stronger or better by increase of knowledge-by growing clearness and certainty of conviction then my progress must be very halting; I may go backward rather than forward. For youth, and not age, is the season of dogma; and as men ripen in experience, they cease to be opinionative. They become less sure than they once were of many things. They leave the issues of the future to God, and the fear of hell may hardly mingle in their thoughts. If able to hold an authoritative creed for themselves, they are thankful; but hesitate to apply it to others, or to judge those who differ from them. True spiritual growth is certainly not in sharpness of opinion, but in largeness of trust -higher, more beautiful, and more embracing thoughts of God and of Christ-thoughts born not of the authority of any school or any Church, but of humility and charity and holy obedience.

The conclusion of the whole therefore is, that we look well to the springs of spiritual life within our own hearts-that we give all heed, by God's blessing, to grow in grace and humility, in mercy and self-sacrifice that we put off the "old man" with his selfish desires, and "be renewed in the spirit of our mind," and put on the

new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Oh let us not waste the days of our strength in the service of evil, hoping that at last we can take up the higher life as an easy task! The thought is impious, as it is unwarranted. If there be a higher life at all, it must always be our duty-it can only be our happiness. All else must be vanity-must be sin-however fair it may look. Let us not deceive ourselves. The brightness of the natural life is vanishing while we look upon it. The glory of the spiritual is alone eternal. Let us choose the better part while God is waiting to be gracious; and all that is good in us-the voice of conscience-the summons of grace,— invite us to give ourselves to the divine service.

"Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord His going forth is prepared as the morning; and He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”

* Hosea, vi. 3.

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VI.

DIVINE GOODNESS AND THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING.

ROMANS, viii. 28.-"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God."

THE idea of God is the root of all religion, and

the love of God its great strength and comfort. Is there One above us who cares for us, who orders all things for our good, and who is therefore the object of our love?—this is the question of questions. Religion cannot stop short of such personal relations, however we may try to fill our minds with vaguer, or what may appear to some grander, thoughts. The idea of order is not enough, magnificent as we may make it. Behind the order we long to grasp a Will-a moral Life answering to our life—a Love at once near to us and supreme. Nor is there any contradiction in the ideas, contradictory

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as they have been sometimes made to appear. It is nothing but the narrowness of human logic that supposes order—or evolution, if we prefer the word-at variance with Providence or the operation of a Supreme Love. Rather, order is Providence, and the law which rules our lives is at the same time the Love which guides themthe working together of all things for good to those who recognise the good and own it.

There is no thought more familiar in Scripture than the thought of an Almighty or Sovereign Will, into whose grasp is gathered the control of all things. The God of Scripture is a Supreme Person, who "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?"* He directs equally all the mightier movements of nature and the minuter changes of life. His omnipotent governance upholds the course of sphered worlds; and at the same time the very hairs of our head are numbered by Him, and not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His permission. "He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names." He also "healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up

* Daniel, iv. 35.

+ Psalm cxlvii. 4.

their wounds."*

His power,

"He divideth the sea with and by His understanding He smiteth through the proud. By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent. Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?"+

We read much nowadays of the anthropomorphism of the Old Testament, and of the manner in which science has extended our conception of nature, and of the universal order which reigns throughout it, binding all things into one. We can never be too grateful for the real results of science-for everything that expands our intelligence and at the same time sobers it; and that larger and truer philosophy, which has planted the great cosmical idea as almost a commonplace in the modern mind, is to be accepted as a blessing. It is impossible to exaggerate the good which has come to popular religion from the growth of scientific thought and the expulsion of those spectres of arbitrary personality which were wont to lurk in the obscurities of nature. But it may be doubted how far the Bible was ever responsible for such

*Psalm cxlvii. 3.

↑ Job, xxvi. 12-14.