when, if we could truly descend to his level of sacrifice, and take his cross to follow, we should be raised in feeling and power, ennobled in impulse, glorified with him in his joy. After all, the secret of all our dryness, the root of all car weakness, our want of fruit and progress, our dearth and desolation, is, that we can not follow Christ. First, we can not believe that he has any particular care of us, or personal interest in our life, and then, falling away, at that point, from his lead, we drop into ourselves, to do a few casual works of duty, in which neither we nor others are greatly blessed. God forbid that we sacrifice our peace so cheaply. Let us hear, O, iet us hear, to-day, the Shepherd's voice, and, as he knows us in our sin, so let us go after him in his sacrifice. Let us claim that inspiration, that ennobled confidence, that comes of being truly with him. Folded thus in his personal care, and led by the calling of his voice, for which we always listen, let us take his promise and follow, going in and out and Lnding pasture VIII. LIGHT ON THE CLOUD. JOB XXXVii. 21.-"And now men see not the bright light which is in the clouds: but the wind passeth, and cleanseth them." THE argument is, let man be silent when God is dealing with him; for he can not fathom God's inscrutable wisdom. Behold, God is great, and we know him not. God. thundereth marvelously with his voice: great things doeth he which we can not comprehend. Dost thou know the won drous works of him that is perfect in knowledge? Teach us what we shall say unto him; for we can not order our speech by reason of darkness. If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up. Then follows the text, representing man's life under the figure of a cloudy day. The sun is in the heavens, and there is always a bright light on the other side of the clouds; but only a dull, pale beam pierces through. Still, as the wind comes at length to the natural day of clouds, clearing them all away, and pouring in, from the whole firmament, a glorious and joyful light, so will a grand clearing come to the cloudy and dark day of life, and a full effulgence of light, from the throne of God, will irra diate all the objects of knowledge and experience. Our reading of the text, you will observe, substitutes for cleansing, clearing away, which is more intelligible. Perhaps, also, it is better to read "on the clouds," and not The "in." Still, the meaning is virtually the same. words, thus explained, offer three points which invite our attention. I. We live under a cloud, and see God's way only by a dim light. 11. God shines, at all times, with a bright light, above the cloud, and on the other side of it. III. This cloud of obscuration is finally to be cleared away. I. We live under a cloud, and see God's way only by a dim light. As beings of intelligence, we find ourselves hedged in by mystery on every side. All our seeming knowledge is skirted, close at hand, by dark confines of ignorance. However drunk with conceit we may be, however ready to judge every thing, we still comprehend almost nothing. What then does it mean? Is God jealous of intelligence in us? Has he purposely drawn a cloud over his ways, to baffle the search of our understanding? Exactly con trary to this; he is a being who dwelleth in light, and calls us to walk in the light with him. He has set his works about us, to be a revelation to us always of his power and glory. His word he gives us, to be the expression of his will and character, and bring us into acquaintance with himself. His Spirit he gives us, to be a teacher and illu minator within. By all his providential works, he is train ing intelligence in us and making us capable of knowledge. No view of the subject, therefore, can be true that accuses him. The true account appears to be that the cloud, under which we are shut down, is not heavier than it must be. How can a being infinite be understood, or comprehended, by a being finite? And, when this being infinite has plans that include infinite quantities, times and relations, in which every present event is the last link of a train of causes reaching downward from a past eternity, and is to be con nected also with every future event of a future eternity, how can a mortal, placed between these two eternities, without knowing either, understand the present fact, whatever it be, whose reasons are in both? Besides, we have only just begun to be; and a begun existence is, by the supposition, one that has just begun to know, and has every thing to learn. How then can we expect, in a few short years, to master the knowledge of God and his universal kingdom? What can he be to such but a mystery? If we could think him out, without any experience, as we do the truths of arithmetic and geometry, we might get on faster and more easily. But God is not a mere thought of our own brain, as these truths are, but a being in the world of substance, fact and event, and all such knowledge has to be gotten slowly, through the rub of experience. We open, after a few days, our infantile eyes and begin to look about, perceive, handle, suffer, act and be acted on, and, proceeding in this manner, we gather in, by degrees, our data and material of knowledge; and so, by trial, comparison, distinction, the study of effects and wants, of rights and wrongs, of uses and abuses, we frame judgments of things, and begin to pass our verdict on the matters we know. But how long will it take us to penetrate, in this manner, the real significance of God's dealings with us and the world, and pass a really illuminated judgment on them? And yet, if we but love the right, as the first father did before his sin, God will be revealed in us internally, as the object of our Love and trust, even from the first hour. He will nɔt appear to be distant, or difficult. We shall know him as friendly presence in our heart's love, and we shall have such a blessed confidence in him that if, in the outer world of fact and event, clouds and darkness appear to be round about him, we shall have the certainty within that justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. Meanwhile, he will be teaching us graciously, and drawing us insensibly, through our holy sympathies, into the sense of his ways, and widening, as fast as possible, the circle of our human limitation, that we may expatiate in discoveries more free. And thus it comes to pass that, as the eyelids of the infant are shut down, at first, over his unpracticed eyes, which are finally strengthened for the open day, by the little, faint light that shines through them, so our finite, childish mind, saved from being dazzled, or struck blind, by God's powerful effulgence, and quickened by the gentle light that streams through his cloud, is prepared to gaze on the fullness of his glory, and receive his piercing brightness undimmed. But there is another fact less welcome that must not be orgot, when we speak of the darkness that obscures our knowledge of God. There is not only a necessary, but a guilty limitation upon us. And therefore we are not only obliged to learn, but, as being under sin, are also in a temper that forbids learning, having our mind disordered and clouded by evil. Hence, come our perplexities; for, as the sun can not show distinctly what it is in the bottom of a muddy pool, so God can never be distinctly revealed ir the depths of a foul and earthly mind. To understand a philosopher requires, they tell us, a philosopher; to understand patriotism, requires a patriot; to understand purity, |