life are the foreshadowings and pledges of the retributions of the life to come. Thank GOD! we live under a dispensation of grace, as well as a dispensation of retribution. The entail of evil may be cut off. GOD, in the exercise of His mercy, cancels the guilt and remits the penalty, of all who truly repent of their sins, and believe in JESUS CHRIST. He offers to us pardon full and free for all our transgressions. We have but to accept that which He offers, to enjoy the peace that passeth all understanding. This peace is a present heaven,-sure earnest of the future inheritance. Reconciled to GOD through our Lord JESUS CHRIST, instead of the retributions of guilt, ours will be the rewards of salvation, which God the righteous Judge shall give us at the last day. LECTURE VI. THE SORROWS OF LIFE. "For all his days are sorrows."-ECCLES. ii. 23. THE HE music of universal nature is in the minor key. In winds, and waves, and songs of birds, may be heard an undertone of sorrow. The history of the world and of man is a history of sorrow. Far back in the ancient days, men and women and children suffered and wept; and from beneath our life of to-day, hard and cynical though it be, there rises a bitter cry of human souls in grief and woe. Never morning wears to evening, but some heart breaks. Sorrow is one of the chief elements in our earthly lot, and is interwoven with the whole texture of our existence. This is the recorded experience of men in all countries, in all stages of social advancement, and under all forms of government and religion. A heathen poet makes one of his heroes say,— "How many births are passed I cannot tell, And a poet of our own sings of those whose fate it is, "To speed to day, to be put back to-morrow; The varieties of sorrow are great. It springs in some cases from pain of body; in others from mental disease; in others from disappointment; in others from bereavement; in others from pecuniary loss. Some sorrow through envy; some through pride; some through wounded vanity; some through jealousy; some through poverty, or fear of poverty; some through consciousness of sin. "The heart knoweth his own bitterness." The sorrows of some are much greater,—much more intense, than those of others. The grief of some men is comparatively light,— "A feeling of sadness and longing, that is not akin to pain, Others are sorely tried, steeped to the lips in misery; the very air around them seems universal pain. Their grief is such as COLERIDGE describes,- "A grief without a pang,-void, dark, and dreary,— A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear; " such as TENNYSON attributes to one of his heroines, when, "Home they brought her warrior dead; 'She must weep, or she will die."" The strongest heart, sometimes, faints with the feeling that friends know only half its grief. It would give all its possessions to see a sympathetic face, or to hear a voice of comfort. "The woes of others dwell apart, And human sympathy reject; And there are those who carry about every day, all their life long, a sorrow from which on earth there is no deliverance,—some small reserve of near and inward woe, over which they mourn alone and unseen,— "One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws a sorrow of which no word may be spoken but to God. Of all sorrow, that which comes through the commission of sin is the deepest and darkest,-lies back of all the rest,-is the parent malady, and poisons all the streams of life. "There is no sorrow like the grief It steals the brightness from the face, And childhood's days are clouded o'er, In the fair spring-time of the world, Sorrow sometimes dwells in the breast, though the face wear a smile. "Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful." Those who appear gayest may be the saddest. CERVANTES, at a time when Spain was laughing at the humorous flights of his pen, was overwhelmed in melancholy. MOLIÈRE, the first of French comic. writers, carried into his domestic circle a sadness which the greatest worldly prosperity could never dispel. FOOTE, a noted wit of the last century, died of a broken heart. THEODORE HOOKE, the witty and admired, writes in his Journal,-" I am suffering under a constant depression of spirits, which no one who sees me in society dreams of." And THOMAS HOOD, one of the princes of wit and humour, was also one of the saddest of men. No circumstances, however auspicious, F neither health, nor friends, nor riches, can exclude sorrow. ; "Here none to perfect bliss attain And even the happiest hours their sighs." Sorrow is part of GOD's purpose in the plan of our lives. He has created us with the susceptibility of it; and thus opened in the very centre of our being its fountain. Outward circumstances only furnish occasion for the inward pain. The school of sorrow has been the training school of some of the greatest and best men. Some of the world's noblest poets have learnt in suffering what they have taught in song. Those who have approached nearest the centre of things, and seen furthest into their heart,-who have stood on the highest, clearest platforms of life, have been sons of sorrow. JESUS CHRIST Himself, the Head and Redeemer of the human race, the God-man, drank to its very dregs the cup of human woe. He was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Now, inasmuch as we are all subject to sorrow, we shall do well to remember that it has its sweet uses, and fulfils a gracious ministry. It is a fearful thing to see how some men are made worse by it,-how it sours the temper, and works out into misanthropy and malevolence. THOMAS COOPER says, in his Autobiography, that his sufferings in Stafford gaol contributed to strengthen his unbelief. He persuaded himself that the world was full of wrong, and that there could not be an almighty and good GOD; and his angered and distempered mind defiantly set itself to resist all thought of a GOD. Sanctified sorrow, however, is a rich blessing. We may not in every case be able to tell its mysterious agency, as it travels on and wraps its strange texture of sackcloth around us; we may not be able always to read the |