ing all, in order to teach you some
of the sweetest, deepest lessons that ever entered your heart. There
is not a cross, a loss, a disappointment, a case of failure in your
life, which is not arranged and controlled by the loving Saviour, and
intended to teach some lesson which else could never be acquired.
Fitfully, curiously, without apparent art or fixed design, is the web
of our lives woven; thread seems thrown with thread at random, no
orderly pattern immediately appears, but yet of all that web there is
not a single thread whose place and color are not arranged with
consummate skill and love.

But what good can failure do? It may shut up a path which you were
pursuing too eagerly. It may put you out of heart with things seen and
temporal, and give you an appetite for things unseen and eternal. It
may teach you your own helplessness, and turn you to trust more
implicitly in the provision of Christ. It is clear that Christians
have often to toil all night in vain, that Christ may have a background
black and sombre enough to set forth all the glories of His
interposition.

II. In the morning Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not
that it was Jesus. It was customary for fish-dealers to go down to
greet fishers on their return from the night's toil, in order to buy up
fish. Such a one now seemed waiting on the sand in the grey light, and
His question was such as a fish-dealer might put: "Children, have you
any food?" It therefore never occurred to the disciples to think that
it was Jesus. And indeed, after the miracle was wrought, it was only
the keen eye of love that knew Him to be the Lord. How often is the
Lord near us, and we know Him not! He is standing there in the midst
of scenes of natural beauty though His foot leaves no impression on the
untrodden sand, and His form casts no shadow on the flowers or
greensward. He is standing there in that dingy counting-house, or amid
the whirr of the deafening machinery, though He fills no space, and
utters no word audible to human ears. He is standing there in that
home, watching the sick, noting unkindness and rudeness, smiling on the
little deeds done for His sake, though none ever heard the floors creak
beneath His weight, or saw the doors open to admit His person. How
much we miss because we fail to discern Him!

By acting thus He not only taught His disciples the reality of His
presence, but He prepared them also for that new kind of l