tary among the ashes, the secret of the Lord is only
the more secretly and intimately with them. John Bunyan was well fitted
to be Christiana's biographer, because his own life was as full as it
could hold of these same secret and special providences. One day he was
walking--so he tells us--in a good man's shop, bemoaning himself of his
sad and doleful state--when a mighty rushing wind came in through the
window and seemed to carry words of Scripture on its wings to Bunyan's
disconsolate soul. He candidly tells us that he does not know, after
twenty years' reflection, what to make of that strange dispensation. That
it took place, and that it left the most blessed results behind it, he is
sure; but as to how God did it, by what means, by what instruments, both
the rushing wind itself and the salutation that accompanied it, he is
fain to let lie till the day of judgment. And many of ourselves have had
strange dispensations too that we must leave alone, and seek no other
explanation of them for the present but the blessed results of them. We
have had divine descents into our lives that we can never attempt to
describe. Interpositions as plain to us as if we had both seen and
spoken with the angel who executed them. Miraculous deliverances that
throw many Old and New Testament miracles into the shade. Providential
adaptations and readjustments also, as if all things were actually and
openly and without a veil being made to work together for our good.
Extrications also; nets broken, snares snapped, and such pavilions of
safety and solace opened to us that we can find no psalm secret and
special enough in which to utter our life-long astonishment. Importunate
prayers anticipated, postponed, denied, translated, transmuted, and then
answered till our cup was too full; sweet changed to bitter, and bitter
changed to sweet, so wonderfully, so graciously, and so often, that words
fail us, and we can only now laugh and now weep over it all. Poor Cowper
knew something about it--

"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

"Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain."

3. Secret scriptures a