Arab sailor) with piteous gesture and wail of despair, to the Eternal. On our loyalty to God's revelation of Fatherhood and Sonship, depends all. If we are true to it; if sorrow be accepted as the proof of our sonship, then we must greet, and not dread it. Not that human love and sympathy and feeling are to be trampled on, for they were keen enough in the ideal son, and we cannot follow in his steps, save by being perfectly human. But there is such a thing as glorying in infirmity, that the power of Christ may rest upon us. There is such a thing as filling up his sufferings on earth. To faithful souls is that glory given. To them, it is as a breeze from the everlasting hills, blowing away from before them some of the mists of sense, and letting them catch a glimpse of our Father's home. The great and noble, whose sorrows are a power over us, were called to witness to the truth of God's revelation, by great acts. Ours it is, in these days when material happiness sits in the very temple of God and exalts itself above all that is called God and is worshipped,-to meet this anti-Christ, by setting forth in the every-day round of duty, in the common routine of life's troubles,-the Divine glory of Sorrow. Now, more than ever, is it a duty, for these are times when the love of self is actually being put forth as a new gospel, and men are vieing with one another in self-indulgence, as if in emulation of the beasts that perish. When we walk by the light of God's revelation about sorrow, we shall (mindful that physical evil is the work of man, and not of God,) not only have the power to deal with it, but the courage. Parents will understand, that on their own self-discipline depends the physical and moral welfare of those coming after them. The petting which now follows a scratched finger, will be turned into an encouragement to bear pain nobly and willingly. Children will no longer be brought up, in violation of the laws of health,-bodies and souls half ruined, that brain may be developed. Hospitals will be emptied, because of the reverence paid to God's sanitary laws, and penal legislation will become easy, as the virtues, instead of the vices of parents are strengthened in each succeeding race. But what of that most awful thing-moral evil, Sin, the sense of separation from the One better than the best conceivable; the inability to commune with Him? That, so the revelation tells us, is only for a time. The creature waits to be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The conflict will be over in the days that are coming, when faithfulness to the ideal shall be rewarded by its realization, and God shall be the all in all. The sorrow which comes with sin, blessed be God, must last awhile. Let us joyfully welcome it as the earnest of sonship, the pledge of the future and eternal victory of the Divine in us. For were the Divine to cease its struggle with us; were sin, which causes our separation from the Father, no longer to cause disquiet and sorrow, we might well despair. But happily for us, the universal history of man's religion is proof certain of the ceaseless craving for oneness with the Divine, the expressed determination to have it; and the Fatherhood of God, comprehended by an ideal and perfected sonship, through the things which it suffers, would be meaningless, but that it can satisfy man and offer to him deliverance from self, in unbroken, ever-strengthening union with the Father. Thus it is the crowning glory of sorrow, to be the angel which leads us, purified like him who went before us there, to the throne of the Eternal. On the road thitherward, it tells us : "The longing for Him when thou seest Him not; Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory." And whether here or elsewhere, we may be made in all things like unto him who was made perfect through suffering, the parting of our guardian angel from us will be, 66 Farewell, but not for ever, brother dear; Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow. And I will come and wake thee on the morrow." THE GOSPEL OF WORK. "CURSED be the ground, for thy sake; in the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread," was the text of a sermon lately preached to a large congregation, who were gravely told to accept the trial of work, as a sad necessity, the punishment of their sins. No class was exempted from the universal curse, and the preacher made what he thought a point, by dwelling on the use of the word in, as proof that the curse was not on manual labour only, but that it covered the wide area of literary, professional, political and spiritual toil. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate how the revelation has become obscured; obscured too, just in the same way as it was found to have been, when considering the meaning of Sorrow. Ease and comfort were grateful to the animal nature, and hence what was contrary thereto must come from One who was opposed to man, and who could find vent for His displeasure in inflicting the troubles of life. Similarly, the necessity for Work, the significance of which cannot be understood by the animal nature, must be the result of the curse of the Eternal One, a punishment for sin. Hence it comes that a religious teacher, seizing on a few words written by whom he knows not, positively turns upside down the revelation, puts darkness for light and bitter for sweet. Or at least, if the preacher be right, the revelation, as apprehended by the religious sense—as set forth objectively in the person of Jesus—must be wrong. "To preach the kingdom of God was I sent forth," was said not sadly, as if a curse had to be fulfilled, but joyously, as with a growing realization of the blessedness of life; the finishing the work which had been appointed of the Father. With the ideal Son, work was the meat and drink of life, it was proof of his relation to the Father, because he said, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do," and to have finished the work which had been given him, was a thought on which he could stay himself, as the sad end came on. So too, with the first preachers of the revelationWork with them was a glory not a curse. They were labourers together with God, and hence their sense of the dignity and nobleness of work. They were "stewards of the mysteries of God," and it was required of stewards that a man be found faithful. They had been "called into God's own kingdom and glory," hence their study was, "to walk worthy of God, to do their business and work with their hands, yea, to labour night and day rather than be chargeable to any." Avoiding those who were "busy about nothing, save being busybodies," their anxiety was to M |