He proportions grace to trial. Your extremity is His opportunity. 'They went through the flood on foot," says the Psalmist; "THERE did we rejoice in Him." Beautiful picture! or rather, glorious testimony to the sustaining grace of God; a firm footing amid the threatening waves:-nay, more, "THERE!" (when the billows were around us; in the very midst of our affliction)—"THERE did we rejoice in Him!" He will deal tenderly, wisely, lovingly with you. He does not pour down waterfloods on the mown grass." considers His people's case. There is no Bible figure on which the Christian mourner dwells with such delight as that of the Refiner of silver sitting by the furnace of His own lighting-tempering its heat- -regulating the fury of its flames-quenching the violence of the fires-designing all, ALL-not to consume and destroy, but to purify and brighten. That REFINER, too, from deep-felt experience, knows your sorrows. "I have had a deep, a very deep wound," says Lady Powerscourt; "the trial has been very severe, but how should I have known Him as a Brother born for adversity without it? . . . He has gone through every class in our wilderness-school; He seems intent to fill up every gap love has been forced to make. One of His errands from heaven was to bind up the broken-hearted." You can hear, as it were, the voice of the departed stealing down from the heights of glory, and thus, as Boaz said to Ruth, gently rebuking your fast-falling tears," It is true that I am thy near kinsman, how beit there is a Kinsman nearer than I!" (Ruth iii. 12). Though earthly ties have been severing, He still "lives and loves." "She was," said good old Philip Henry, when writing of Lady Puleston, who died in 1658, "She was the best friend I had on earth, but my Friend in heaven is still where He was, and He will never leave me nor forsake me." "Whatsoever, whomsoever you have lost, you have not lost your Jesus, your best Friend. You have His eye, His tender, watchful, provident eye upon you still; you have His ear open to your cries still; yea, you have His everlasting arms underneath you to sustain you still, for else you would sink. . . . To have a Friend in heaven, and such a Friend, so wise, so powerful, so faithful, so merciful, so sensibly affected with all our misery, so tender, so able, and so willing to bear and help us!-I say this is infinitely better than all the friends that ever we had or could have on earth."1 Trust Him. He will "guide you (nay, He is guiding you) by His counsel;" "and afterward "_" AFTERWARD!"— It is not for you to scan that word! It may be one of painful significance; it may be after much discipline ; it may be after a rough and rugged and thorny roadtrial upon trial. Remember what follows that "afterward" "He will receive you into Glory!" Soon the last ripple of affliction will be heard, and then its sound will die away for ever! Entering the triumphal arch دو 1 Bunyan's "Heart's Ease." 66 of heaven, you will read in living characters the history of a sinless, sorrow less future: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Rev. xxi. 4). THE FIRST-FALLEN FLOWER. "My Beloved is gone down into His garden. . . to gather lilies."-SOL. SONG vi. 2. "When the fruit is ripe, immediately He putteth in the sickle."-MARK iv. 29. Why weep for the beautiful flower, As if premature plucked away? Survived had its blossoms that hour, It had lived, but had lived to decay. But now it has left this cold scene To bloom in the regions above, Where no storms, where no clouds intervene, The rose in the garden that falls, Has its vacant place filled up again; No gap in the branches recalls That a transient blank had e'er been. Not so with the hearts that bewail The blight of the tender home-flower: No subsequent leaves can avail To fill its missed place in the bower! Oh, happy, thrice happy the time, When again we shall meet, ne'er to sever; II. SECOND CAUSES. THEN SAID MARTHA UNTO JESUS, LORD, IF THOU HADST BEEN HERE, MY BROTHER HAD NOT DIED."-JOHN xi. 21. 66 THEN WHEN MARY WAS COME WHERE JESUS WAS, AND SAW HIM, SHE FELL DOWN AT HIS FEET, SAYING UNTO HIM, LORD, IF THOU HADST BEEN HERE, BY BROTHER HAD NOT DIED.”—JOHN xi. 32. SECOND CAUSES. T no time more than on the occasion of early deaths and early graves does the sad brooding over 'second causes come into painful, and sometimes unworthy conflict with the Christian's better faith and loftier confidences. The words of both the Bethany mourners, which head this meditation, the natural expression of their sorrowing spirits, may help to carry with them to the heart of the bereaved, lessons alike of tender rebuke and of patient resignation. It is unnecessary again to rehearse the narrative, which has furnished us with the subject of a previous paper. Martha had already, in her interview with her Master, and her sister Mary now repeats in broken accents, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Often at a season of sore bereavement some one poignant thought or reflection takes possession of the mind, and, for the time, overmasters every other. This echo of the one mourner's utterance by the other, leads us to conclude that it had been a familiar and oftquoted phrase during these days of protracted agony. This independent quotation, indeed, on the part of |