tokens that he had sent me, I sealed them up in a box; the letters I tied together in three large packages, and then, went he roically to my usual labors, never faltering for a moment. Only at eventide, when I drew my chair up to the little stand in the parlor, did my fortitude forsake me. Ought I to be ashamed to say that then I bowed my head and wept Utterly bereft! I moaned the words again and again.

It is not often in the first hours of grief that we can look upward, look aloft to Him, who is a friend above all others." I could not yet the human in me for the time had conquered the Divine, and I could only sob and moan.

Five days passed wearily, drearily. I received two letters in the time from him, and laid them aside with the old ones. On the sixth day there came an answer to the letter I had written on that memoroble night. I knew it was by the date. But there came with it no package through the mail, and when I hurried to the Express Office there was nothing there for

me.

I took the letter home and sealed it up with the others, and then tying on my hat and drawing on my gloves, I took them in my hand, determined that though he were unmanly enough to retain mine, I would still be true to my idea of right, and return his.

My hand was on the door-knob, when suddenly a new thought came to me, a strange, bewildering thought. I had read in romance and song of men who perjured themselves to spite a favored lover. Might not this be even so? My head grew dizzy and my heart bounded.

The young lieutenant had offered me his hand and heart the evening before the regiment left. I had refused him, of course, and when he begged to be allowed to hope, I had told him my heart and hand were already promised. Could it be possible he had invented so gross a falsehood out of enmity to Spencer, out of wrath towards me?

Open the Colonel's letter, plead my heart. I did not yield at once, It was hours indeed, before I could conquer my womanly pride enough-but I did at last, and read:

MY DARLING ISABEL :

If I were anything but a soldier, I would come to you this very day; but we are on the eve of battle, and for me to ask for a furlough now, would be to brand my name with cowardice. Isabel, dearest, darling, light of my eyes and jewel of my heart, believe me when I tell you that next to my country, you are my first love, the only woman to whom I ever of fered my band, the only woman whom I ever expect to marry. I am liable to be summoned away at any moment and must be brief, but I enclose the certificate of our head surgeon, who has known me from my boyhood; I also enclose two letters from my mother, received by the last mail, one to myself and one to you. Darling, go to her at once, and from her lips receive the assurance that you only are or ever have been my promised wife. They call me I must go-go, perhaps to death. Yet even in death, I am thine, thine only, ARCHIBALD.

The certificate from the surgeon was brief but to the point. He had always lived within stone's throw of Colonel Spencer's family, and knew him to be a bachelor.

The mother's letters were such as only a mother could write to an only son and his betrothed. In the one to me she said that the infirmities of age and weakness would prevent her coming to me at once, as her heart prompted, but she hoped I would lose no time in making her a visit.

"Come at once, darling - don't wait till after the wedding-you are as dear to me now as you will be then, and my life is so fragile, that mayhap if you wait till then, I may never see you - you whom my Archibald loves so fondly and truly."

What did I do? I packed my trunk within an hour, and within another, was in a crowded passenger car, bound for Fairfield Centre. Ten miles from there, I left the train and took a stage. There were only two passengers beside myself, an old lady and gentleman, with such loveable faces that my heart yearned to them at once. We were soon engaged in conversation. After awhile, the old lady asked me if I had ever been in Fairfield

'Perhaps then we shall have a chance to get acquainted. May I ask the name your friend?"

of

"Certainly. Mrs. Spencer."

"Our nearest neighbor and dearest friend. How fortunate to have met you. She's a poor invalid, but a lovely wo

man.'

I nodded

married

--

I could not speak. "Why, bless you, child; he never was never will be, I don't believe. He's too almighty hard to be suited." The stage stopped here at a little waystation, and took up a couple of ladies, who proved to be old friends of my new friends, and in the busy conversation that ensued between them, I was left to my own reflections. Guess what they were! "This is kind this is very kind," said the palefaced lady who took my hand on the porch of the old-fashioned mansion. Archibald's promised wife!" and she drew me to her heart, and kissed my flushed cheeks and my hot lips.

་་

46

There," taking me up stairs to a large front chamber, "that is Archibald's room. I never allow any guest to use it; it is sacred to him. But you, his Isabel, you shall occupy it. See," and she led me to a bookcase, "here are his favorite authors." I ran my eye over them. He had quoted from them an hundred times

Weary and hungry-not a bit of it. I merely stopped long enough to change my dusty travelling dress, and smooth my somewhat disordered hair, and then following her to the parlor, begged her to talk to me of Archibald's early days. She insisted first on our taking tea, but then, after I had played his favorite airs, and sung his favorite songs, she let me nestle on a hassock, close to her feet, and lay my head on her knees, while she talked to me.

That night, sitting in his chair, beside his desk, with his pen in my hand, I wrote to him, wrote sheet after sheet, wrote as only those write, who have been lifted from the despair of hell to the abounding mercy of high heaven. I spent two weeks at his mother's homestead, writing to him every evening and hearing from him every day. Then I left her and went back to my own home.

--

was

The first of September arrived. He could not come for me. No furloughs were longer to be granted. But it womanly? I went to him. He urged it and his mother, too. I went to him, and, standing up beside him, before the altar of a little church whose sacredness war had trampled on, I became his bride, the chaplain of the regiment performing the ceremony. We had no bridesmaids, no groomsmen, no white favors, no wines or wedding cake, yet I doubt if God's sunshine ever shone upon a happier pair. This is the third month since our bridal, My husband has been in several hard battles since, but while hundreds have fallen all about him, he has so far escaped. I follow him constantly. Wherever he pitches his tent, there is our home. With my own hands, I prepare our food, make our bed, and wash and iron our clothes. And when our own little canvas house is in proper shape and order, I go into the hospitals and labor there. Many a

wounded limb have I helped bandage; many an aching head have I tenderly bathed; from many a cold brow have I wiped off the death-dew, over many a grave have I hung garlands of the golden leaves and purple asters.

How soon it will come my turn to mourn, I dare not think. I know I am liable at any hour to be made a soldier's widow, but I know this, also, that as we make history fast in these days, these days of sorrow and valor, so do we live and love fast, and my three months of wedded life are already as much to me as threescore years have been to others in time of peace. At any rate, come what will, I feel that it

Among the forcible and beautiful similitudes of the Bible, there are two used by the Psalmist, which are of special in

terest to the attentive and devout reader of them. They are found in the eleventh verse of the eighty-fourth Psalm: "For the Lord God is a sun and shield."

The first named comparison is one as well adapted to popular use and acceptance as any of which we can conceive. Heathenism has been led to see God in this great luminary whose coming makes the day; to bow before its rising or setting glories, and to adore the element with which it has seemed so strikingly and mysteriously identified. As in the poet's

words:

"Angel of light! who from the time

Those heavens began their march sublime,
Hath, first of all the starry choir,
Trod in his Maker's steps of fire."

Under a higher instruction than that of heathenism, may we consider the aptness and beauty of this similitude which the Psalmist employs.

Our natural sun is the great dispenser of light and heat to our own earth, to a system of revolving worlds. Wherever God intended that this good should be imparted, there is its work going on. At the frozen poles, or where the tropics yield their abundance, is this ready and full supply. Fit illustration of that goodness which extends wherever man has existence and connection with other beings and works of the Creator around him.

Wherever his creatures dwell upon our al darkness; and wherever animal life is globe, no part of it is doomed to perpetufound, there is found also, adaptation of climate and element to its wants. The happiness of his creatures was one of the great ends of the Infinite One, when he

called them into being. Rightfully doth the Psalmist sing, "How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! Therefore do the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them to drink of the river of thy pleasures."

Perpetually emitted, too, are the rays of our earth's sun. They are ever going forth on their beneficent errands. As constantly outflowing is the impartial grace of "the Father of Lights, with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning." There can be no diminution of his disposition to bless. In this fulness to all his offspring, "He was, and is, and is to

come.

Darkness is the absence of light. 'God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." If we imagine darkness with him, and human weakness will thus imagine, it is proof that light in us is wanting. We lack vision, we doubt, and are perplexed, and in despair, and sometimes cannot see how God reigns. And yet, who reigns, if he does not? And what has kept this general order through all the past, in spite of fearful and distrustful man? The words of the Psalmist stand ever true. "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice. Let the multitude of the isles therof be glad. Clouds and darkness are round about him; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his As light dissipates darkness, so the dispensation of divine truth, through Him that hath truth's power, is to cure the moral blindness of mankind. "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound"

throne."

We need just such a God as this comparison sets forth; one having all fulness, graciousnesss, life-imparting and sustaining power, immutability; a God on whom we can ever rely, amid all the changes, perplexities, burdens and losses of our mortal life. And amply are we supplied in this presentation and others like it in the sacred word. They direct us to One who can know no failure nor decay; to whom, of old, the filial, confidential word was addressed; "They that know thy name will put their trust in thee." I say

we need such a God as this similitude declares; need a knowledge of his nature, a conviction of his mercy, an assurance that no mortal power can thwart his purposes, no counsellings of mortals make void his promises of grace. He has been such a Light and Helper to many of our race in the past; he is such now to souls yet having their sojourn upon the earth; and were it not for the prevalence of heathenish error, incorporated even with our Christianity, there might at this moment be higher and holier conceptions of his adorable providence and holy reign. Thanks for the hope that he will grant, in his own time, this new and greater dispensation of his everlasting light!

Says a traveller who visited the extreme north of Europe a few summers since, "We left the sea-side a few minutes before midnight, the sun shining warm and ruddy across the calm sound. It was more like a summer at Naples, than what I imagined of midnight in the Arctic Circle."

So God's truth and goodness may come to the soul when it is in the most wintry latitudes of life; making the dreariest places there like summer scenery in some warmer clime. So, too, may we learn, will his presence come in wintriest moral regions of his universe. These are not beyond the reach of his loving kindness, so that the waste places cannot be made glad by his presence, and put on fresh ness and bloom, and bear fruit. Out of this very death shall he bring the life of obedience and submission to his love. "For the creature (creation) was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature (cre. ation) itself also shall be delivered from this bondage of corruption, into the glori ous liberty of the children of God."

"Is he a Sun? his beams are grace;

His course is joy and righteousness;
Nations rejoice when he appears,
To chase their clouds and dry their tears."

The second similitude of the Psalmist is worthy of a place with the one already before us. Our God is represented not only as a light, but as a defence also. "The Lord God is a Sun and Shield."

Man is dependent and requires constant aid from a Source above himself. He is beset with countless ills, and needs deliverance from them; needs a guide who can direct his feet into the way of safety. Such an aid and director is the God and Father of all. So is he represented in his holy word, and that too, in accordance with the instructions given in nature of his care for the creatures of his hand. He has chosen to make his care, his goodness and power known through some special manifestations with his children; and these instances, so far as we are able to view them, are in harmony with each oth

er.

God does not contradict himself in any of them. He is, in all, the same gracious and just being, "plenteous in mercy, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty." In the fulfilment of his purposes, in the vindication of his truth, and to the end that this truth may prove itself the victor, we have brought before us such events as are revealed in the history of a people chosen by him to receive and transmit his true name and service to other nations, and to all the world; ministrations of divine grace, wherein the weak were made strong, and whereby the mighty were confounded.

The instance of Moses is one of these. That infant deposited by its trembling mother, under the proscription of Pharaoh, in the little ark of rushes, upon the brink of the Nile, where the waters might have borne away, or the crocodile have seized the precious charge, was safely held, as in Jehovah's hand. Human means are chosen to shield it from harm. The daughter of Pharaoh approaches; the child is discovered, secared, and restored to the embraces of its own parent, reared and educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and in the truth of heaven. He goes forth, the chosen leader of a mighty nation; this same Moses; left by paternal hands, (impelled to this desperation,) in his innocence and helplessness to die; in the order of the Highest becomes a chosen one, who would yet wax strong, and lead the hosts of Israel out of the land of bondage to a new, a happier and more permanent home. God was the protector

of his servant, and of the great nation led by him to the promised land.

The instance of the stripling David, in his encounter with the giant of Gath, and of the faithful prophet Daniel, who would vindicate God's truth, fearless of the wrath of an earthly potentate, are vivid representations, to which the memory will revert while it retains anything of old Scripture history; of the protection given to his own cause, by Him who hath all power, where it would seem that this very cause must be overcome by the human devices which are brought to bear against it. These ancient records, strange and startling as they are, most fitly represent the great contrasts of righteousness and unrighteous ness; of duty met and performed, and of disobedience persisted, in; of the utter defeat of iniquity, and the glorious triumph of eternal truth.

These old encounters with enemies are but indicators of what in our time men must be called to meet and endure. There are giants which now beset men, more formidable than the one of Philistia; there are lions' dens more terrible than that one into which the faithful prophet was cast, into which multitudes are cast, not to be delivered, but to be devoured by ravenous beasts there. They are in the midst of daily, human life, in this great world. They lead directly out of our streets and highways; they are even at our doors. They are wherever evil and corrupting practices hold men; where the confirmed in iniquity lay their enticements for the more innocent and unsuspecting. They are in the inebriate's revelling house; at the gambler's shrine; in the deadly places of the debased and sensual; in homes and haunts where God's laws are mocked, where his name is dis honored, and the holy sympathies of humanity are drowned in earthliness and sin. They are evils, too, let me say, from which deliverance may be gained, through that same confidence which led the son of Jesse to say to that mailed warrior, confronting him, "I come to thee in the name of the Lord;" and the prophet who feared not the mandate of death, to exclaim from the depths of the den, into which human impotence and