motions. We
may sometimes have to listen carefully, however, to hear the soft, sweet
strains of its melody.

Be patient in your trials; endure hardness as a good soldier; keep up the
shield of faith; fight the good fight; and in due season your soul will
sing triumphant songs of victory, and the joy-bells, pealing out their
merry music, will summon God's people to rejoice with you in your Lord and
Savior.

TALK FORTY. BLOWING THE CLOUDS AWAY

I had been passing through a period of sore conflict. For several days I
had had gloomy and distressing feelings. I had struggled with all my might
against them. I had tried to draw near the Lord and to get special help
from him. It was hard to pray, and it seemed that when I prayed no answer
came. Discouragement pressed in upon me. I had no idea of giving up the
fight, but I knew not what to do next. It seemed that my strength was
exhausted by the conflict. As I lay there meditating; it seemed that all
at once a quiet voice said to me: "Do not try to blow away the clouds with
your feeble breath. If you will be content to wait, the same wind that
brought them will carry them away again."

As the voice spoke I seemed to see myself in a little ravine where I had
often been, with a great mass of thick clouds overhead moving slowly
along. The lesson that God would get to me illuminated my mind. I saw how
foolish it would be to try to blow away those great clouds. All my blowing
could not move them an inch. I might strain and struggle, and try until my
strength was all gone, but the clouds would not pass away, nor would the
sunshine come a moment sooner for all my efforts.

So those spiritual clouds that were hanging so low above me and wrapping
me in their somber shadows could not be blown away by my feeble breath. I
had nearly worn myself out by my efforts, but had gained nothing at all. I
had worried myself, and it was all to no purpose. As I looked back at the
beginning of that season of heaviness and darkness, I could not see
anything that I had done to bring it; it had just settled down upon me
without any apparent reason, just as the clouds in the heavens come over
the face of the sky without relation to any act of yours or mine.

Brother, sister, have you not had such experiences in your Christian life?
Have not darkness and gloom, heaviness and depression, come over your soul
and you could not tell why? You began to question yourself, thinking that
surely there