ime or place. It was on the
lonely ridge, strewn with boulders and swept by night-winds, when the
darkness closed in drearily about him, that Jacob, a homeless exile, in
the hour of his utmost desolation, saw the ladder whose golden head was
set at the very foot of God, thronged with bright messengers of strength
and hope. And again it was in the familiar homestead, with every corner
rich in gentle memories, that the spirit of terror turned the bitter
stream of anguish, as from the vent of some thunderous cloud, upon the
sad head of Job. We may turn a corner in life, and be confronted perhaps
with an uncertain shape of grief and despair, whom we would fain banish
from our shuddering sight, perhaps with some solemn form of heavenly
radiance, whom we may feel reluctant in our unworthiness to entertain.
But in either case, such times as those, when we wrestle all night with
the angel, not knowing if he wishes us well or ill, ignorant of his name
and his mien alike, are better than hours spent in indolent contentment,
in the realisation of our placid and petty designs. For, after all, it
is the quality rather than the quantity of our experience that matters;
it is easy enough to recognise that, when we are working light-heartedly
and eagerly at some brave design, and seeing the seed we plant springing
up all about us in fertile rows in the garden of God. But what of those
days when our lot seems only to endure, when we can neither scheme nor
execute, when the old volubility and vitality desert us, and our one
care is just to make our dreary presence as little of a burden and a
shadow as possible to those whom we love? We must then remind ourselves,
not once or twice, that nothing can separate us from the Father of all,
even though our own wilfulness and perversity may have drawn about us
a cloud of sorrow. We are perhaps most in God's mind when we seem most
withdrawn from Him. He is nearer us when we seek for Him and cannot find
Him, than when we forget Him in laughter and self-pleasing. And we must
remember too that it is neither faithful nor fruitful to abide wilfully
in sadness, to clasp our cares close, to luxuriate in them. There is a
beautiful story of Mrs. Charles Kingsley, who long survived her husband.
Never perhaps had two souls been united by so close a bond of chivalry
and devotion. "Whenever I find myself thinking too much about Charles,"
she said in the days of her grief, "I find and read the most sensational
no