e no effort? Is there not a time when
deeds, struggles, prayers, are of some avail?-when the spirit, in its
intense agony, with swollen strength and surging tears, heaves against
the catastrophe, if yet, perchance, it may ward it off? Truly, there
is such a time, and the humblest disciple of Christ may weep as he also
wept. But let him also strive as Christ strove. Let him not dash his
grief in rebellious billows to the throne; let not his groans arise in
resentful murmurs; let the remembrance of what God is and why he does,
be with him, and let the filial, reverent trust steal in,--"Not my will,
but thine be done." That reference to God, that obedience to him, rising
from the very depths of sorrow, and clung to without faltering, is
RESIGNATION. It shall bestow peace and victory in the end. O! how
different from that sullen fatalism that lets things come as they
will. To such a soul things do come as they will, and it hardens under
them,-they do come as they will, but it sees not, cares not, why they
come. No thought goes up beyond the cloud to God,-no strength is born
that shall make life's trials lighter,-no love and faith that will seek
the Father's hand in the darkest hour, and shed an enduring light over
the thorny path of affliction, and upon the bosom of the grave. Look at
these two. Outwardly, their calmness may be the same. Nay, the one may
evince emotion and tears, while the other shall stand rigid in the hour
of calamity, with a bitter smile, or a frown of endurance. But in the
one is strength, in the other rigidity; in the one is power to triumph
over sorrow, in the other only nervous capacity to resist it. The one
is man hardened to indifference, sullen because of irreligion, upon whom
some sorrow will one day fall that will peel him to the quick, and he
will not know where to flee for healing. The other is man contending
against evil, yet not against God,-man with all the tenderness and
strength of his nature, impressible yet unconquerable, walking with feet
that bleed among the wounding thorns, and a heart that shrinks from the
heavy woe, yet, all lacerated as he is, able to walk through, because he
holds by the hand of Omnipotence. The one is the unbending tree, peeled
by the lightning and stripped by the North wind, lifting its gnarled
head in sullen defiance to the storm, which, when the storm does
overcome it, shall be broken. The other also is rooted in strength,
and meets the rushing blast with a lof