ose fate is still involved in
darkness? Can any one of the saints of old, whose deeds and words are
recorded in God's Book, and are telling every day and hour upon the
history of mankind, and must continue to do so till time shall be no
more, comprehend what they really have done on earth? Must not the end
of all things come before they understand the place and the work their
Lord assigned to them? And so is it with the humblest believer. He
is a part of a great whole; and to understand how Jesus has governed
Himself as a part, he must be able to see his own life in relation to
the great whole. But each Christian who has walked by faith, and held
fast his confidence in Christ, will then also have revealed how the
Lord has governed him, and all that He has done to him and for him,
and what He has enabled him to be and to do on earth. The sackcloth
and ashes of every patient Job will be turned into garments of
praise; and the lamentations of every mourning Jeremiah into songs of
gladness: and in adoring wonder and unutterable joy, every head will
be bowed down, every crown cast at Christ's feet, and every heart
will feel, and mouth confess, "He hath done all things well!" What an
amazing disclosure will this be of the wisdom and love with which our
gracious Lord has assigned to each servant his lot,--given to each
"_his_ work," and so prepared all things for him in the world, and so
made all things work together for his good, that "the fruit has been
holiness, and the end everlasting life!"

2. But the Christian will also behold at judgment the excellence of
Christ's government over others, and over the whole world.

If we are such mysteries to ourselves, and if we cannot as yet truly
write our own biographies, how much more perplexing to us is the
personal history of any other in his relation to the Redeemer! How
impossible to discover the reasons of all, or of any, of Christ's
providential dealings with him, or to read aright any one day in his
life! Was it possible for Job's friends to interpret, _at the time_,
Job's sufferings? God alone could have corrected Jacob when, in the
dark night of his sorrow, yet just before the daybreak of his joy
in Egypt, he cried, "Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and will ye take
Benjamin away?--_all these things are against me!_" Daniel in the
lions' den, or the three young men in the furnace, with a wicked king
in peace upon the throne; John the Baptist in the dungeon, with Herod
in th