light over this stormy scene, and enable the one that keeps
_it_ before him to walk the troubled waters of this life in quiet
assurance and safety. Death still may play sad havoc with the most
sensitive of affections; but that Love shall, as we have before seen,
permit us to weep tears; but not bitter despairing tears. Further, it
sheds over the spirit the glorious light of a coming Day, and we look
forward, not to an awful impending gloom, but to a pathway of real
light, that pierces into eternity. The Day! We are of the Day! The
darkness passes, the true light already shines! Then listen, my
fellow-pilgrims, to the _Spirit's_ counsel: "But ye, brethren, are not
in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all
the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the
night, nor of darkness. Therefore, _let us not sleep_, as do others,
but _let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the
night; and they that are drunken, are drunken in the night. But let us
who are of the Day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and
love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation_."

Our poor preacher, in the darkness of the cloud of death, counsels,
"merrily drink thy wine." And not amiss, with such an outlook, is such
advice. In the perfect Light of Revelation, lighting up present and a
future eternity, well may we expect counsel as differing from this as
the light in which it is given differs from the darkness. _"The night
is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works
of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk
honestly, as in the Day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in
chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts
thereof_." _Amen and Amen_.

But once again our Preacher turns; and now he sees that it is not
assuredly possible for the advice he has given to be followed, and that
even in this life neither work, device, knowledge, nor wisdom, are
effective in obtaining good or in shielding their possessor from life's
vicissitudes. The swift--does he always win the race? Are there no
contingencies that more than counterbalance his swiftness? A slip, a
fall, a turned muscle, and--the race is not to the swift. The
strong--is he necessarily conqueror in the fight? Many an unforeseen
and uncontrollable event has turned the ti