The reply is, that gifts are granted to elicit our affections; they are resumed to elicit them still more; for we never know the value of a blessing till it is gone. Health, children, we must lose them hefore

we know the love which they contain.

However, we are not prepared to say that a charge might not, with some plausibility, be brought against the love of God, were no intimation ever given that God means to resume His blessings, That man may fairly complain of his adopted father, who has been educated as his own son, and, after contracting habits of extravagance, looking forward to a certain line of life, cultivating certain tastes, is informed that he is only adopted; that he must part with these temporary advantages, and sink into a lower sphere. It would bo a poor excuse to say that all he had before him was so much gain, unmerited, It is enough to reply that false hopes were raised, and knowingly,

Nay, the laws of countries sanction this, After a certain period a title to property cannot be interfered with if a right of way or road has existed, in the venerable language of the law, after a custom "where of the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," no private right, however dignified, can overthrow the public claim, I do not say that a bitter feeling might not have some show of justice, if such were the case with God's blessings.

But the truth is this: God confers His gifts with distinct reminders that they are His. He gives us for a season spirits taken out of His universe; brings them into temporary contact with us; and we call them father, mother, sister, child, friend. But, just as in some places, on one day in the year, the way or

warn

path is closed in order to remind the public that they pass by sufferance, and not by right, in order that no lapse of time may establish "adverse possession," so does God give warning to us. Every ache and pain, every wrinkle you see stamping itself on a parent's brow, every accident which reveals the uncertain tenure of life and possessions, every funeral bell that tolls, are only God's reminders that we are tenants at will, and not by right, pensioners on the bounty of an hour. He is closing up the right of way, ing fairly that what we have is lent, not given: His, not ours. His mercies are so much gain. The resumption of them is no injustice. Job learned that, too, by heart. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Again, observe the misuse of sorrow. When He came to the house, He found the minstrels and people making a noise. In the East, not content with natural grief, they use artificial means to deepen and prolong it. Men and women make it a separate profession to act as mourners,- to exhibit for hire the customary symbols and wail of grief, partly to soothe, and partly to rivet sorrow deeply, by expression of it.

The South and North differ greatly from each other in this respect. The nations of the North restrain their grief, affect the tearless eye and the stern look. The expressive South, and all the nations whose origin is from thence, are demonstrative in grief. They beat their breasts, tear their hair, throw dust upon their heads. It would be unwise were either to blame or ridicule the other, so long as each is true to Nature. Unwise for the nations of the South to deny the real ity of the grief which is repressed and silent. Unjust

in the denizen of the North, were he to scorn the violence of Southern grief, or call its uncontrollable demonstrations unmanly. Much must be allowed for temperament.

These two opposite tendencies, however, indicate the two extremes into which men may fall in this_matter of sorrow. There are two ways in which we may defeat the purposes of God in grief- by forgetting it, or by over-indulging it.

The world's way is to forget. It prescribes gayety as the remedy for woe; banishes all objects which recall the past; makes it the etiquette of feeling, even amongst near relations, to abstain from the mention of the names of the lost; gets rid of the mourning weeds as soon as possible- the worst of all remedies for grief. Sorrow, the discipline of the Cross, is the school for all that is highest in us. Self-knowledge, true power, all that dignifies humanity, are precluded, the moment you try to merely banish grief. It is a touching truth that the Saviour refused the anodyne on the cross that would have deadened pain. He would not steep His senses in oblivion. He would not suffer one drop to trickle down the side of His Father's cup of anguish untasted.

The other way is to nurse sorrow: nay, even our best affections may tempt us to this. It seems treason to those we have loved to be happy now. We sit beneath the cypress; we school ourselves to gloom. Romance magnifies the fidelity of the broken heart; we refuse to be comforted.

Now, all this must be done by effort, generally speaking. For God has so constituted both our hearts and the world that it is hard to prolong grief beyond

a time. Say what we will, the heart has in it a sur prising, nay, a startling elasticity. It cannot sustain unalterable melancholy: and beside our very pathway plants grow, healing and full of balm. It is a sullen heart that can withstand the slow but sure influences of the morning sun, the summer day, the sky and flowers, and the soothing power of human sympathy.

We are meant to sorrow; but "not as those without hope." The rule seems to consist in being simply natural. The great thing which Christ did was to call men back to simplicity and nature; not to perverted, but original nature. He counted it no derogation of His manhood to be seen to weep. He thought it no shame to mingle with merry crowds. He opened His heart wide to all the genial and all the mournful im pressions of this manifold life of ours. And this is what we have to do: be natural. Let God-that is, let the influences of God-freely play unthwarted upon the soul. Let there be no unnatural repression, no control of feeling by mere effort. Let there be no artificial and prolonged grief, no "minstrels making a noise." Let great Nature have her way. Or, rather, feel that you are in a Father's world, and live in it with Him, frankly, in a free, fearless, childlike, and natural spirit. Then grief will do its work healthily. The heart will bleed, and stanch when it has bled enough. Do not stop the bleeding; but also do not open the wound afresh.

II. We come to the principles on which a Miracle rests.

1. I observe that the perception of it was confined

to a few. Peter, James, John, and the parents of the child, were the only ones present. The rest were excluded. To behold wonders, certain inward quali fications, a certain state of heart, a certain suscep tivity, are required. Those who were shut out were rendered incapable by disqualifications. Absence of spiritual susceptibility in the case of those who "laughed Him to scorn," unbelief in those who came with courteous scepticism, saying, "Trouble not the Master;" in other words, He is not master of im possibilities, unreality in the professional mourners, the most hopeless of all disqualifications. Their whole life was acting: they had caught the tone of condolence and sympathy as a trick. Before minds such as these the wonders of creation may be spread in vain. Grief and joy alike are powerless to break through the crust of artificial semblance which envelops them. Such beings see no miracles. They gaze on all with dead, dim eyes, wrapped in conventionalisms, their life a drama in which they are but actors, modulating their tones and simulating feelings according to a received standard. How can such be ever witnesses of the supernatural, or enter into the presence of the Wonderful? Two classes alone were admitted. They who, like Peter, James, and John, lived the life of courage, moral purity, and love; and they who, like the parents, had had the film removed from their eyes. by grief. For there is a way which God has of forcing the spiritual upon men's attention. When you shut down the lid upon the coffin of a child, or one as dearly loved, there is an awful want, a horrible sense of insecurity, which sweeps away the glittering mist of time from the edge of the abyss, and you gaze on the phan