faith in living verities, that produces the change, is truly called a "saving faith "-not in a saving dogma, "held" with the will, but in a veritable saving fact, mighty in the life and soul; even this "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself."

THE TWO MYSTERIES.

"The crown of all crowns has been one of thorns." "Love is the root of creation-worlds without number lie in God's bosom like children."

REAT is the mystery of sorrow; nor less great

is the mystery of love, that embosoms it and all things. How like a great sorrowful tomb seems this world at times!-a grim sepulchre, whereon we sigh or sing out our little day—wherein disappear, one after another, our cherished hopes and dear delights, and into whose ample bosom we at last sink, as into relentless night. Why did God make us to love so, and to cling to all strong and lovesome things, when over them all hover the pitiless shade, and ghastly hand, so that the air is filled with the sobbing of the

miserable, and the cries of the children of a broken

life? until

"Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." These passionate longings of ours-why have they been given us, when our best attempts at noble flight all end in some sad and painful fluttering, as of an eagle beating its helpless wings against the bars of its inexorable cage? Who taught us to love, and made it a law of our nature that we should cling, and depend, and be glad in our little joys, while torn tendrils and broken branches ever impede our way, even in the quietest paths of life, where winter winds have reached, and done their cruel work, and made the lovesome garden a desolation and a nameless grief? Why is all this so? Why are not all old wrongs righted? and why does the ghastly shade of evil and misery stalk abroad, in a world that should turn its fair face, in beauty, up to its loving Lord and Life? Who has not been burdened with this great mystery? and who shall tell us why God's world is made to groan and suffer, night and day, for its fallen or its wasted ones, and how it is that Heaven can endure that earth should sorrow so?

The poor, untaught mother, with only the instincts of her better nature to guide her-instincts all given to her by the dear Giver of all Life and Light-how

does she tend the little child her God has given her! If she could only help it, not one pain should reach its head, nor weary its life: the wind should not blow on it too roughly, and a summer's sun and an unbroken peace should be his, could she but have her will. Temptation should never whisper in that innocent car, and the rough world should deal gently with him. His mother's eye would never leave him, and no hand should follow him, where her arm could not reach and Heaven and earth should conspire to love and tend and bless her child. And we are God's children, and He is tending and guiding us and He loves us, they tell us, with better than a mother's love; and yet it seems a cruel world to us, and men have to cast about in their hearts, to find out an answer to the horrid doubt, that either this is not His world after all, or that being His, He has long left it all alone.

The mystery of sorrow! ah me; look just beneath the glitter and the outer show of things (and even they themselves are sad enough), then will the burden of the mystery reveal itself to us, and the sad, low moan of the great heart of the world will come to us. What a shrine is the human heart-sacred to the worship of sorrow! every heart knowing its own bitterness, and silently appealing to Heaven whether its burden can seem right and beautiful there.

The mystery of sin too, beclouding this mystery of sorrow with its sad shade of cruel wrong and foul undoing who shall tell us of it?—who shall help us to see light here? The poorest, the dullest—one might even say, the wickedest father, if he saw the pure mind of his child becoming familiar with defiling sin, and if he knew how some subtle tempter plied the innocent and trusting soul, how would he rise up to the full height of his better nature, and fling aside so foul a wrong-doing, and even smite the tempter rather than that his child should be undone! And yet God is our Father, with an arm reaching where no poor human arm can go, and a vision that is bounded by neither space nor time; and yet the innocent are daily tempted to their undoing, and the cries of the betrayed rise up to the silent heavens both night and day.

Why does God permit it? Why does He not do what any man would do, even with his poor lovestep in between the spoiler and the fighting soul, and guard the sweet life of the pure in heart? And who shall call that a wicked question? Is it not the

mystery that burdens a million hearts, and had it not better be uttered? perchance light may come when the heart ceases to brood, and begins to speak. Let it speak then, and perchance that other mystery of love may dawn upon it, even through the shade of this

mystery of sorrow. Nay! not through it, but within it, and yet enfolding it and all things: making all things beautiful in their time, and bearing all things up, to the strong and holy victory. For all the grace and beauty of the world, and the benediction of Heaven on the hearts and toils of men, though not the full outpourings, are yet the sweet revealings of the mighty love of God. And the patience that comes of longsuffering, and the strength of heart that comes of weakness, and the gentle graces that steal into the heart through the rents that some great grief has made, are all blessed revealings to the soul, of the tender love and infinite pity of God: so that sorrow itself becomes a revelation of love. For sorrow is, at once, beautiful and great, and makes the heart both tender and strong. How near they come to each other, then, we do not know; we only know how they are woven into the whole fabric of our life, and how we are hurried on, as by an invisible hand, from day to day, whil ethe Infinite Father sits at the "loom of Time," and weaves the "time-vestures" of Love and Sorrow, for us to know Him by: for are not both these the overshadowing of our finite by the Infinite?

And now, of these mysteries, is not this of God's love the greater ?—nay, the only great, as enfolding all things? That He should dwell with us and love us, and begird us round with laws and benedictions,