brooding thought. Thou art to die; or thy friend must die; or worse still, thy friend is faithless. Or thou sayest that coming life is dark and desolate. And now as thou sittest there, I will speak to thee; and I say though sighs will burst from thy almost broken heart, yet when they come back in echoes from the silent walls, let them teach thee. Let them tell thee that God wills not thy destruction, thy suffering for its own sake; wills thee not, cannot will thee, any evil; how could that thought come from the bosom of infinite love! No, let thy sorrows tell thee, that God wills thy repentance, thy virtue, thy happiness, thy preparation for infinite happiness! Let that thought spread holy light through thy darkened chamber. That which is against thee, is not as that which is for thee. Calamity, a dark speck in thy sky, seemeth to be against thee; but God's goodness, the all-embracing light and power of the universe, forever lives, and shines around thee and for thee.

"Evil and good, before him stand

Their mission to perform."

The angel of gladness is there; but the angel of affliction is there too; and both alike for good. May the angel of gladness visit us as often as is good for us !-I pray for it. But that angel of affliction ! what shall we say to it? Shall we not say, come thou too, when our Father willeth; come thou, when need is; with saddened brow and pitying eye, come; and take us on thy wings, and bear us up to hope, to happiness, to heaven; to that presence where is fulness of joy, to that right hand, where are pleasures for evermore !"

There is one further thought which I must not fail to submit to you, on this subject, before I leave it. The greatness of our sufferings points to a correspond

ent greatness in the end to be gained. When I see what men are suffering around me, I cannot help feeling that it was meant, not only that they should be far better than they are, but far better than they often think of being. The end must rise higher and brighter before us, before we can look through this dark cloud of human calamity. The struggle, the wounds, the carnage and desolation of a battle, would overwhelm me with horror, if it were not fought for freedom, for the fireside; to protect infancy from ruthless butchery, and the purity of our homes from brutal wrong. So is the battle of this life, a bewildering maze of misery and despair, till we see the high prize that is set before it. You would not send your son to travel through a barren and desolate wilderness, or to make a long and tedious voyage to an unhealthy clime, but for some great object: say, to make a fortune thereby. And any way, it seems to your parental affection, a strange and almost cruel proceeding. Nor would the merciful Father of life, have sent his earthly children to struggle through all the sorrows, the pains and perils of this world, but to attain to the grandeur of a moral fortune, worth all the strife and endurance. No, all this is not ordained in vain, nor in reckless indifference to what we suffer; but for an end, for a high end, for an end higher than we think for. Troubles, disappointments, afflictions, sorrows, press us on every side, that we may rise upward, upward, ever upward. And believe me, in thus rising upward, you shall find the very names that you give to calamity, gradually changing. Misery, strictly speaking and in its full meaning, does not belong to a good mind. Misery shall pass into suffering, and suffering into discipline, and discipline into virtue, and virtue into heaven. So let it pass with you. Bend now patient

ly and meekly, in that lowly "worship of sorrow," till in God's time, it become the worship of joy, of proportionably higher joy; in that world where there shall be no more sorrow nor pain nor crying; where all tears shall be wiped from your eyes; where beamings of heaven in your countenance, shall grow brighter by comparison with all the darkness of earth.

And remember too, that your forerunner into that blessed life, passed through this same worship of sorrow. A man of sorrows was that Divine Master, and acquainted with grief. This is the great Sabbath of the year* that commemorates his triumph over sorrow and pain and death. And what were the instruments, the means, the ministers of that very victory, that last victory? The rage of men, and the fierceness of torture; the arraignment before enemies-mocking, smiting, scourging; the thorny crown, the bitter cross, the barred tomb! With these he fought, through these he conquered, and from these he rose to heaven. And believe me, in something must every disciple be like the master. Clothed in some vesture of pain, of sorrow or of affliction, must he fight the great battle and win the great victory. When I stand in the presence of that high example, I cannot listen to poor, unmanly, unchristian complainings. I would not have its disciples account too much of their griefs. Rather would I say, courage! ye that bear the great, the sublime lot of sorrow! It is not forever that ye suffer. It is not for naught, that ye suffer. It is not without end, that He spared not his own Son

ye suffer.

dom for us.

God wills it.

from it. God wills it. It is the ordinance of his wisNay, it is the ordinance of Infinite love, to procure for us an infinite glory and beatitude.

*Easter Sunday.

XIV.

ON THE SCHOOL OF LIFE.

O GOD, THOU HAST TAUGHT ME FROM MY YOUTH.-Psalm lxxi. 17.

LIFE is a school. tion. It is not a prison nor a penitentiary, nor a palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and spectacles; it is a school. And this view of life is the only one that goes to the depths of the philosophy of life; the only one that answers the great question, solves the great problem of life. For what is life given? If for enjoyment alone, if for suffering merely, it is a chaos of contradictions. But if for moral and spiritual learning, then everything is full of significance, full of wisdom. And this view too, is of the utmost practical importance. It immediately presents to us and presses upon us the question: what are we learning? And is not this, truly, the great question? When your son comes home to you at the annual vacation, it is the first question in your thoughts concerning him; and you ask him, or you ask for the certificates and testimonials of his teachers, to give you some evidence of his learning. At every passing term in the great school of life, also, this is the all-important question. What has a man got, from the experience, discipline, opportunity of any past period? Not, what has he gathered together in the shape of any tangible good; but what has he got-in that other and eternal treasure

This world is a house of instruc

house, his mind! Not, what of outward accomodation the literal scholar has had, should we think it much worth our while to inquire; not whether his text books had been in splendid bindings; not whether his study-table had been of rich cabinet-work, and his chair softly cushioned; not whether the school-house in which he had studied, were of majestic size, or adorned with columns and porticoes; let him have got a good education, and it would be comparatively of little moment, how or where he got it. We should not ask what honours he had obtained, but as proofs of his progress. Let him have graduated at the most illustrious university, or have gained, through some mistake, its highest distinctions, and still be essentially deficient in mind or in accomplishment; and that fatal defect would sink into every parent's heart, as a heavy and unalleviated disappointment. And are such questions and considerations any less appropriate to the great school of life; whose entire course is an education for virtue, happiness, and heaven? "O God!" exclaims the Psalmist, "thou hast taught me from my youth."

Life, I repeat, is a school. The periods of life, are its terms; all human conditions are but its forms; all human employments, its lessons. Families are the primary departments of this moral education; the various circles of society, its advanced stages; kingdoms are its universities; the world is but the material structure, built for the administration of its teachings; and it is lifted up in the heavens and borne through its annual circuits, for no end but this.

Life, I say again, is a school: and all its periods, infancy, youth, manhood and age, have their appropriate tasks in this school.

With what an early care and wonderful apparatus,