There does not seem to be any hand on the helm. Job's health fails. David's Absolom gets to be a reprobate. Martha's brother dies. Abraham's Sarah goes into the grave of Machpelah. "Woe was the day in which I was born!" has said many a Christian. David seemed to scream out in his sorrow, as he said: "Is his mercy clean gone forever? And will he be favorable no more? And hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" Job, with his throat swollen and ulcered until he could not even swallow the saliva that ran into his mouth, exclaims: "How long before thou wilt depart from me, and leave me alone, that I may swallow down my spittle ?" Have there never been times in your life when you envied those who were buried? when you longed for the gravedigger to do his work for you? I have seen such days. Oh, the faithlessness of the human heart! God's wings are broad, whether we know it or not.

Sometimes the mother-bird goes away from the nest, and it seems very strange that she should leave the callow young. She plunges her beak into the bark of the tree, and she drops into the grain-field, and into the chaff at the barn-door, and into the furrow of the ploughboy. Meanwhile, the birds in the nest shiver, and complain, and call, and wonder why the mother-bird does not come back. Ah, she has gone for food. After a while there is a whirr of wings, and the mother-bird stands on the edge of the nest, and the little ones open their mouths, and the food is dropped in; and then the old bird spreads out her feathers, and all is peace. So, sometimes, God leaves us. He goes off to get food for our soul; and then he comes back after a while to the nest, and says, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it;" and he drops into it the sweet promises of his grace, and the love of God is shed abroad, and we are under his wings-the broad wings of the Almighty.

Yes; they are very broad! There is room under those wings for the thousand millions of the race. You say: "Do not get the invitation too large, for there is nothing more awkward than to have more guests than accommodations." I know it. The Seamen's Friend Society are inviting all the sailors. The Tract Society is inviting all the destitute. The Sabbath-schools are inviting all the children. The American and Foreign Christian Union is inviting all the Roman Catholics. The Missionary Society is inviting all the heathen. The printing-presses of Bible Societies are going night and day, doing nothing but

printing invitations to this great Gospel banquet. And are you not afraid that there will be more guests than accommodations? No! All who have been invited will not half fill up the table of God's supply. There are chairs for more. There are cups for more. God could with one feather of his wing cover up all those who have come; and when He spreads out both wings, they cover all the earth and all the heavens. Ye Israelites, who went through the Red Sea, come under! Ye multitudes who have gone into glory for the last six thousand years, come under! Ye hundred and forty-four thousand, and the thousands of thousands, come under! Ye flying cherubim and archangel, fold your pinions, and come under! And yet there is room! Ay! if God would have all the space under his wings occupied, he must make other worlds, and people them with other myriads, and have other Resurrection and Judgment Days; for broader than all space, broader than thought, wide as eternity, from tip to tip, are the wings of the Almighty! Oh! under such provision as that can you not rejoice? Come under, ye wandering, ye weary, ye troubled, ye sinning, ye dying souls! Come under the wings of the Almighty. Whosoever will come, let him come. However ragged, however wretched, however abandoned, however woe-begone, there is room enough under the wings-under the broad wings of the Almighty! Oh, what a Gospel! So glorious, so magnificent in its provisions! I love to preach it. It is my life to preach it. It is my heaven to preach it.

I remark, further, that the wings under which Ruth came to trust were strong wings. The strength of a bird's wing-of a sea-fowl's wing, for example-you might guess it from the fact that sometimes for five, six, or seven days it seems to fly without resting. There have been condors in the Andes that could overcome an ox or a stag. There have been eagles that have picked up children, and swung them to the top of the cliffs. The flap of an eagle's wing has death in it to every thing it strikes. There are birds whose wings are packed with strength to fly, to lift, to destroy. So the wings of God are strong wings. Mighty to save. Mighty to destroy. I preach him-" the Lord, strong and mighty-the Lord, mighty in battle!" He flapped his wing, and the antedeluvian world was gone. He flapped his wing and Babylon perished. He flapped his wing, and Herculaneum was buried. He flapped his wing, and the Napoleonic dynasty ceased. Before the stroke of that pinion a fleet is nothing. An army is nothing. An empire is nothing.

A world is nothing. The universe is nothing. King-Eternal, Omnipotent-he asks no counsel from the thrones of heaven. He takes not the archangel into his cabinet. He wants none to draw his chariots, for they are the winds. None to load his batteries, for they are the lightnings. None to tie the sandals of his feet, for they are the clouds. He is the Lord God Almighty -a truth that is sad or glad, just according to the position you occupy-just as the castle is grand or terrible, according as you are inside or outside of it. If you are inside of it, it is your defence. If you are outside of it, it is your destruction. The Lord God is a tower, a stronghold, a fortress. Found in him -oh, the gladness of this truth I am preaching! The mighty God. Mighty to save. Our enemies may be strong. Our sorrows violent. Our sins may be great. But quicker than an eagle ever hurled down from the crags a hawk or a raven, will the Lord God strike back our sins and our temptations, if they assault us when we are once seated on the eternal rock of his salvation. What a blessed thing it is to be defended by the strong wing of the Almighty! Stronger than the pelican's wing, stronger than the albatross's wing, stronger than the condor's wing, are the wings of the Almighty.

I have only one more thought to present. The wings under which Ruth had come to trust were gentle wings. There is nothing softer than a feather. You have noticed when a bird returns from flight, how gently it stoops over the nest. The young birds are not afraid of having their lives trampled out by the mother-bird the old whip-poor-will drops into its nest of leaves, the oriole into its casket of bark, the humming-bird into its hammock of moss-gentle as the light. And so, says the Psalmist, He shall cover thee with His wing. Oh, the gentleness of God! But even that figure does not fully set it forth; for I have sometimes looked into the bird's nest and seen a dead bird-its life having been trampled out by the mother-bird. But no

one that ever came under the feathers of the Almighty was trodden on.

Blessed nest! warm nest! Why will men stay out in the cold to be shot of temptation and to be chilled by the blast, when there is this divine shelter? More beautiful than any flower I ever saw are the hues of a bird's plumage. Did you ever examine it? The blackbird, floating like a flake of darkness through the sunlight; the meadow-lark, with head of fawn, and throat of velvet and breast of gold; the red flamingo flying over the

Southern swamps, like sparks from the forge of the setting sun; the pelican white and black-morning and night tangled in its wings-give but a very faint idea of the beauty that comes down over the soul when on it drop the feathers of the Almighty. Here fold your weary wings! This is the only safe nest. Every other nest will be destroyed. The prophet says so: "Though thou exalt thyself like the eagle, and set thy nest among the stars, yet will I bring thee down, saith the Lord of Hosts." Under the swift wings, under the broad wings, under the strong wings, under the gentle wings of the Almighty, find shelter until these calamities be overpast. Then when you want to change nests, it will only be from the valley of earth to the heights of heaven; and instead of "the wings of a dove," for which David longed, not knowing that in the first mile of their flight they would give out, you will be conducted upward by the Lord God of. Israel, under whose wings Ruth, the beautiful Moabitess, came to trust.

God forbid that in this matter of eternal weal or woe we should be more stupid than the fowls of heaven; "for the stork knoweth her appointed time; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their going; but my people know not the judgments of the Lord."

THE WHITE HAIR OF JESUS.

"His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow."-Revelation i. 14.

TRADITION and an ancient document tell us that the hair of

Christ, when he was upon earth, was chestnut color to the ears, and then flowed down in golden curls upon the neck. My text says that his hairs were white; that is, of course, a figurative representation. As Jesus died at thirty-three years of age, we are apt to think of him as a young man; but he is living now. That makes him more than an octogenarian, more than a centenarian-ay, eighteen hundred and seventy-two years of age. the Bible tells us that he was present at the creation of the world; that makes him six thousand years old. Ay, Jesus says of himself, "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the world was; so that makes him as old as eternity.

He

You wear a suit of clothes for a little while, then put it off not to put it on again; and so the Lord Jesus put on the raiment of our humanity for a little while, and then doffed it for ever. is an aged Christ; his hairs are white like wool, white like snow. If God will help me this morning, I will tell you of the sorrow, the beauty, and the antiquity of Jesus.

There is nothing that so soon changes the color of the hair as trouble. You see some man to-day with his hair jet-black; if you see him five years from now, his hair will be white. Meantime, his property is gone, or he has been bereft of his family, and that sorrow accounts for it. Marie Antoinette came to Paris greeted by a shout, the mightiest Frenchmen her escort. The populace actually tried to unharness the horses from her carriage, that they themselves might draw. it. Beautiful in person, beautiful in heart, the whole French nation worshipped her. A little time passed on, and I behold her on a hurdle, or sled, drawn toward the place of execution, her arms pinioned behind her, one eye entirely put out, the glory of her face extinguished. Oh, the change! History says of this woman that, imprisoned, her husband executed, her children torn from her embrace, the knife of the guillotine sharpening for her neck-in one night her hair turned white.

Well, surely, Jesus my Lord had enough sorrow to whiten his