ot err, my beloved brethren. Every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the
Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of
turning. Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that
we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures.'

My friends, all these things were written for our examples. God
grant that we may lay the lesson to heart. A dark night may come to
any one of us, a night of darkness upon darkness, and sorrow upon
sorrow, and bad luck upon bad luck; till we know not what is going
to happen next; and are ready to say with David--'All thy waves and
thy billows are gone over me;' and with Hezekiah--'I reckoned till
morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day
even to night wilt thou make an end of me.'

God grant, that before that day comes, we may have so learnt to know
God, as to know that the billows are God's billows, and the storms
his storms; and, after a while, not to be afraid, though all earthly
hope and help seem swept away. God grant that when trouble comes
after trouble, we may be able to see that our Father in heaven is
only dealing with us as he dealt with those poor Jews; that he is
all the while saying 'Peace!' to us, whether we be near him, or far
off from him; and is ready to heal us, the moment that he has worked
in us the broken and contrite heart. And we may trust him that he
will do it. With him one day is as a thousand years. And in one
day of bitter misery he can teach us lessons, which we could not
teach ourselves in a thousand years of reading and studying, or even
of praying. But our prayers, we shall find, have not been in vain.
He has not forgotten one of them; and there is the answer, in that
very sorrow. In sorrow, he is making short work with our spirits.
In one terrible and searching trial our souls may be, as the Poet
says--

Heated hot with burning fears,
And bathed in baths of hissing tears;
And battered by the strokes of doom.
To shape and use.

Yes. He will make short work at times with men's spirits. He
grinds hearts to powder, that they may be broken and contrite before
him: but only that he may heal them; that out of the broken
fragments of the hard, proud, self-deceiving heart of stone, he may
create a new and harder heart of flesh, human and gentle, humble and
simple. And then he will return and have mercy. He will show that
he will not contend for ever. He