visible Presence of its dearest Lord; for then " shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

we

"Let the attainment of this Divine Life be the continual prayer and breathing of thy soul, the longing ever rising up before the altar, the desire that is ever present before God, the resolve by which thou art known in the kingdom of His grace. The only true life is the life which begins and ends in God. . 'O Lord our God, other lords besides Thee have had dominion over us, but by Thee only will we make mention of Thy name.' 'Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and after that receive me with glory; for whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee, My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.""*

* Carter's Sermons.

HELL.

I. Earthly Sufferings.

Ir will perhaps help us to realise more vividly the horrors of the lost in hell if we spend a few moments in meditation on the nature and uses of earthly sufferings.

Suffering is the law of our present nature. The infant newly born into the world, and the man who, encompassed with age and infirmities, is sinking to the grave, alike bear witness to this truth. There is no escape from this law. It is inevitable that we should suffer in mind or in body, or in both. That the cross of suffering seems to press less hardly on some than on others, that some are for long years comparatively free from it, is true; but sooner or later it will come, and the question is, How are we to bear it when it comes?

But perhaps the first question which the rebellious soul puts to itself is this, Why does God permit suffering? If He is all powerful and all merciful, why did He make His creatures subject to pain? Why did He not place me at once in a position where

I should be free from temptation, sin, and suffering? But is the clay to say to the potter Why hast thou formed me thus? Is the creature to lay down its laws for the Creator? It is enough for us to know that it is the will, inscrutable if you like, but still the will, of God to make us bow our necks in submission.

And yet we may go further and assert boldly in vindication of the mercy of God, that He did not create us for suffering. Suffering is the law of our nature not as it was created by God, but as it was perverted by us. It is the law not of our healthy nature but of a diseased and perverted nature, that has departed from the original condition of its being. There was no pain or suffering in Eden. Does not this thought remove still further from us all ground of complaint? If the child is told that fire burns, and then in wilful disobedience thrusts his hand into it, can he justly complain of the pain it causes him ? If death and its antecedents, sorrow and pain, were the proclaimed consequences of sin, can man complain when by his own actions he has brought those consequences upon himself ? Whatever therefore it be the will of God that we should suffer in obedience to this law of our fallen nature, let us bear it with patience and resignation, acknowledging the justice of His sentence.

We have been thinking of suffering as the punishment and natural consequence of our sins. Let us look upon it now in another light-as a blessing.

There is a story told in ancient mythology of a man who had the power of turning all he touched into gold. That which the ancients thus vainly dreamed of in their wild fancies is more than realized by the Christian. If the touch of Christ turns not the dust of the earth into material wealth, it does far more, since it converts a curse into a blessing. That which was a grievous burden and heavy to be borne, is joyfully accepted and cheerfully borne after the touch of His hands. It is so with earthly suffering.

In the light of the Gospel we learn to accept suffering:

then are

1. As a mark of our Sonship. "If ye be without chastisement ye bastards and not sons." As a father sees that it is for his children's good sometimes to chastise them, even so it is with us. And though the chastisements at times appear to be grievous, yet we shall only be too thankful for them when they have wrought in us the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Even the eternally begotten Son of God was not in His humanity exempt from this law, but was made perfect through suffering. Is it for us then to raise a complaint when with so many sins to be forsaken, so many imperfec

tions to be cured, we are made subject to similar trials?

2. As a merciful warning against the danger of sin.

If all went well with us,-if sin had no pains and penalties attached to it,-how great fear would there be lest we should lose sight altogether of its future doom, and living entirely for the present, be willingly forgetful of the awful future.

Have we not then great cause to be thankful that we are frequently through suffering brought to a sense of the vanity of all earthly things, and made to seek after those treasures in Heaven which fade not away? How many of us owe our own conversion or first conviction of sin to some merciful affliction, not easy to be borne perhaps at the time! Or, again, how often as we have stood by the sick bed of those whose earlier lives have been spent in sin and carelessness, have we had occasion to bless God for the means which He has taken to bring the sufferer to the knowledge of Himself—as we watched the hard lines which have been traced by sin and worldliness gradually yielding to higher and holier influences-until at last the once hardened sinner is hardly to be recognised in the meek and patient sufferer who is waiting for his consolation.

Verily there is deep truth in the old and simple

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