rrow that marks 'the patience of Job,' and the flood of sunshine
that bathes him, revealing the 'end of the Lord,' have strengthened
countless sufferers to bear and to hold fast, and to hope. We are all
enough of children to be more affected by living examples than by
dissertations, however true, and so Scripture is mainly history,
revealing God by the record of His acts, and disclosing the secret of
human life by telling us the experiences of living men.

But Scripture has another method of ministering encouragement to our
often fainting and faithless hearts. It cuts down through all the
complications of human affairs, and lays bare the innermost motive
power. It not only shows us in its narratives the working of sorrow,
and the power of faith, but it distinctly lays down the source and
the purpose, the whence and the whither of all suffering. No man need
quail or faint before the most torturing pains or most disastrous
strokes of evil, who holds firmly the plain teaching of Scripture on
these two points. They all come _from_ my Father, and they all
come _for_ my good. It is a short and simple creed, easily
apprehended. It pretends to no recondite wisdom. It is a homely
philosophy which common intellects can grasp, which children can
understand, and hearts half paralysed by sorrow can take in. So much
the better. Grief and pain are so common that their cure had need to
be easily obtained. Ignorant and stupid people have to writhe in
agony as well as wise and clever ones, and until grief is the portion
only of the cultivated classes, its healing must come from something
more universal than philosophy; or else the nettle would be more
plentiful than the dock; and many a poor heart would be stung to
death. Blessed be God! the Christian view of sorrow, while it leaves
much unexplained, focuses a steady light on these two points; its
origin and its end. 'He for our profit, that we may be partakers of
His holiness,' is enough to calm all agitation, and to make the
faintest heart take fresh courage. With that double certitude clear
before us, we can face anything. The slings and arrows which strike
are no more flung blindly by an 'outrageous fortune,' but each bears
an inscription, like the fabled bolts, which tells what hand drew the
bow, and they come with His love.

Then, further, the courage thus born of the Scriptures produces
another grand thing--patience, or rather perseverance. By that word
is meant more than simply