e grand sum of your labour is
beyond the reach of the Harpies. God guards it, God quickens it, and God
and angels will rejoice with you when one day you bring your golden
harvest home.

3. Do not be afraid of loving because every love is a sure germ of pain.
Throw wide the doors of your heart to all comers in the name of the
Lord. The sorrows will spring, but the joys will overflow them. Count
yourself rich, as you are rich in love. Keen sorrow it must bring, but
with it superabounding joy. Ask God to hallow your loves, and to
consecrate your crosses, and the pain is purged of all its bitterness;
it is but the first throb of a great unspeakable joy, which will play
like sunlight around your life in the homes where the weary are for ever
at rest.

FOOTNOTE:

[B] Those who wish to settle the critical question will find ample help
in Dr. Ginsburg's learned and exhaustive "Commentary on Ecclesiastes."
(Longmans, 1861.)

V.

THE LOST BIRTHRIGHT.

"Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye
know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the
blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears."--HEB. xii. 16, 17.

These words have always seemed to be among the very saddest in the book
of God. No place of repentance, though sought carefully with tears! It
is a very terrible picture, and seems to describe the experience of what
must have been a very wretched and blighted life. It is possible that if
we study the matter closely some of the tones of sadness may be
lightened; but still Esau and his sad history will remain one of the
dark perplexities of Scripture, just as the acts and the fate of men
like Esau are among the most inscrutable mysteries of life. There are
men like Esau cropping up everywhere; men who seem born to lose their
birthright, to be befooled by the keen and subtle Jacobs, to be seeking
ever places of repentance, and to find Fate inexorable to their tears.
Men _born_ under the dark doom of the rejected, we are tempted to
say--so inevitable their destiny appears from the first. In this case,
"_the elder shall serve the younger_," was written of the twin brethren
in the womb, and Jacob was the successful supplanter from his birth.
There are many sad mysteries in life, and the history of such natures
and their destiny are among the saddest. We cannot hope to fathom it on
earth; but blessed be God for th