upon the surface-to believe in a divine education for ourselves and for others, even when there is confusion in our hearts and the smart of an intolerable pang.

It is useless it may be cruel - to say to smitten and bereaved ones: Be composed. Look beyond the present to the future. Think of how St Paul endured steadfastly unto the end -of his joy in tribulation. It is the will of God that you should be left alone, and His assurance that this and all other things will work together for your good. This is true; and yet for the moment the mere fact of suffering, and its inconsolable bitterness, is even truer. It so fills the heart that aught else cannot get near to it. And there is nothing wrong, in such awful moments of sorrow, when the soul wraps itself in the garment of misery and sits aloof, and the voice of the preacher-even a preacher like St Paulsounds hollow in the ear. There never can be anything wrong in the mere utterance of nature -the forlorn cry of the wounded life which God has so made that it cannot but cry when it is stricken sore. It is needless to attempt explanation. Words fail of meaning before the dumb image of a sorrow that has itself no words. Its stony silence is more pathetic than any voice.

cloud of judgment, or

But while we can explain nothing, and may hardly obtrude consolation, the stricken soul may at length find a meaning and comfort for itself. God may speak to it with a deeper force than nature when this force has spent itself, and the silence of sorrow has left a sanctuary where the Divine may be heard. The consciousness of mercy may rise through all the overwhelming consciousness of pain. The light of love may break from behind the what seemed judgment. The Divine thought for ourselves and for others may take a larger and more beneficent shape than we had dared to suppose. Good of the highest kind has sometimes come from what seemed the most painful evil. From the very bitterness has sprung sweetness; and the wound which seemed to kill has grafted new shoots of character, which have grown into everlasting life.

What fresh depths of feeling and trust and sympathetic love-what tenderness and gracious. helpfulness, and patience and courage -have found their soil in what seemed a hopeless sorrow! The weeping of the night has been turned into the joy of the morning; and the soul that has lain low has risen higher than before to altitudes of virtue. For heaven has

been about it in its sorrow, and it has come. forth from its chamber of loneliness a better, purer, and stronger being. We may fail to realise it, yet

"All sorrow is a gift, and every trouble

That the heart of man has, an opportunity."

We may not feel this consciously. Through the blinding mist of our tears we may not see the purpose of divine mercy. In the sense of un

derstanding it, we may never see it. But the purpose is, nevertheless, sure, and the opportunity of good given. And the good may come to us in many ways we little know, moulding for us new life and higher aims-breathing into our whole being higher activities and a richer strength of self-sacrificing duty.

It may be hard after all, I do not question, to find the good worked in some lives by suffering. There are those that seem to harden rather than soften when the world goes wrong with them, or some mystery of bereavement enters into their lot. It would be wrong to form harsh judgments of any such. It is enough that we can trace the thread of the apostle's meaning in our modern experience, and see how the chosen purpose may work in many ways beyond our first knowledge and feeling. We are bound,

besides, to remember the condition that is attached to the experience of the text. For all growth of good there must be a fitting soil. There must be a capacity of love in us in order to recognise love in God and a purpose of divine love in life. If we narrow our hearts instead of opening them, and so shut ourselves within the walls of our suffering that we cannot see beyond, we may get only moroseness, and evil temper, and impatient defiance from those strokes which have smitten us, yet not that we should for ever dwell in darkness. The light may never arise on us, because we will not lift our eyes towards it, although shining in the heavens. Such selfish concentration is the very opposite of love; and there is no good in it to any soul. It hardens alike in prosperity and adversity. In adversity it tortures as well as hardens. In order to find good anywhere, we must look beyond ourselves. In order to find the highest good we must look towards God, and let our hearts go forth to Him with unfailing trust. We may not be able to say with the patriarch, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." It is of no use repeating the language of Scripture if our thought cannot rise to it. But we must feel * Job, xiii. 15.

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that it is not God's good purpose to slay us in any evil sense, or to bring our lives down to the ground, only that He may raise us up again and give us peace. "Though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." We must believe in Him as our Father, and not merely as our Sovereign and Lord, assured that "He knoweth our frame," and that He will not make us to suffer above what we are able to bear, but with every temptation will find a way of escape.

There is no other hope for life-there can be no other joy in death-than the assurance of a God above us, who is Love, and who has no thoughts but thoughts of love for all the creatures He has made who has appointed our days, and the means of training us to His own service and glory. If we lose the conception of a Divine Benevolence, supreme over all, making all things work together for our good and the good of all, we lose all that can lighten the burden of life, or even render religion itself to a quickened heart anything but a misery. We can only love a God who is Love-whom we * Lamentations, iii. 32, 33.