er country lies
waiting us,--all might be easily borne. The suffering we may not
decline; but safety, utter safety, we may keep through all. _Life_ is
always possible to us. Fidelity, purity, self-sacrifice,--these may
always be ours. Are we baffled in our search for a divine plan in the
universe? Let us look nearer home; can we not find the clew to a divine
plan in our own lives? Yes, there need never fail to us an immediate
token of divinity. There is always, at the lowest, a duty to be done.
There is always, at the very lowest, a burden to be bravely borne. There
is always some one to be helped. Do we say, But this does not comfort
me, does not reassure me? Then let it guide me! It is not essential
that I should be always in the sunshine. It is only essential that in
sunshine or in darkness my steering should be true. And I am never
without a compass while I see that there is for me a higher and a lower,
a right and a wrong, to choose between.

Does any sense of bondage weigh you down? Disappointment, it may
be,--failure, life's fair promise blighted. It may be the bitter slavery
of evil habit. It may be a dull and apathetic way of life, stirred with
a vague yearning toward higher possibilities. It may be the darkness of
a lost faith. It may be a bereavement that has emptied life. Whatever
it be, the angel of deliverance stands beside you. He is perhaps in very
humble garb, unsuspected of you. Some lowly duty awaits you. Some
saddened life, unnoticed by your side, asks you to cheer it. Whatever
opportunity of duty or of service lies in the path before you is God's
own messenger. Meet it like the messenger of a king! So meet every
duty, every opportunity. Find them, make them, for yourself. Live no
longer in solitude but in brotherhood. So shall the very spirit of God
dwell in you; so in his service shall you find perfect freedom.

The end of February is near, and not a hint or whisper of spring does
Nature give us yet. We are wont to have earlier than this a few days at
least that seem to start the sap in the trees and the blood in the veins,
when the first bluebird is heard, and we get one swift, delicious glimpse
of the good time coming. But this year the cold only takes a sharper
clutch. At its average, our northern winter has a fierce and almost
merciless persistence. Those first days of spring are hardly more than
the taste of freedom with which the cat tantalizes the mouse.