and he is pouring out his inmost secrets into the ear of the benevolent friend. Love alone can overcome the enmity of our nature. It will

not be slain by any other weapon. Convince an enemy that you love

him, and the hand will be unclenched, the fire in the eye will be extinguished, the deep hatred will be rooted out. And thus God deals with us. Nothing surprises me more than the gentleness with which the Infinite God deals with us. He who might crush us as we crush a poor moth, who fills heaven with blessedness, and clothes angels with glory, He comes down to us to reason, and persuade, and allure. "I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love."

2. He appoints and uses necessary means of discipline. "I will bring her into the wilderness." Having been "allured," drawn to God, we are then trained, disciplined.

This wilderness state is a state of solitude. Solitude is necessary for every earnest thinker, and for every godly man. He must get out of the crowd in order to think. Men living in the crowd become mere echoes. It is only when a man is thrown upon himself, and in loneliness and quietness sounds his own nature, that he discovers the wealth Standing alone, looking with his own two eyes and not through the eyes of the multitude, using the brains which God has given him, he thinks, and be is strengthened and enriched by the effort. And in solitude he realizes the presence of God. In the busy crowd God is forgotten. His voice is drowned in the din and clatter of the great workshop. He is filling every place with His presence; He is in the shop as well as in the sanctuary, in the warehouse as well as in the secret chamber of devotion; but how seldom He is seen by the hurrying, bustling crowds, intent on gain or pleasure! Oh! if our eyes were opened, we should, like the prophet's servant, see wonders; we should see ministering angels, and God Himself, watching over our path. Seasons of solitude are necessary in order to realize this. "Shut to the door"-shut the world out" and pray to thy Father in secret."

And in solitude we realize our personal responsibility. We are apt to lose sight of this when surrounded by the multitude. We have our partnerships, our companies, our societies, where responsibility is divided, and we forget that " every one must bear his own burden." But when we get out of the noisy town into the lonely wilderness, when its fresh breeze cools our fevered brow and its deep silence calms our wild pulse, then we begin to feel that we stand before God, not as crowds, but as units, that we are personally responsible, and that every one must give an account of himself."

This wilderness state is also one of trouble. The Israelites were led from the house of bondage to freedom, but they were led in the wilderness for forty years; and thus God humbled them, and proved what was in their heart. Chastisement was then, and is now, the necessary discipline for God's children. Why does God correct them? One reason is, to make them feel that sin is terribly hateful. This is

the lesson God is teaching us, and which we are all so slow to learn. Sin turned Eden into a wilderness. It has turned many a home into a miniature of hell. And when we are led into the wilderness of trial, God shows us the tendency of sin-to convert every fertile plain into a barren desert. When the bitter cup is placed in our hand, the bitterness is caused by sin. In the wilderness God tells us, "Oh, do not this abominable thing which I hate." And another reason why His children are chastised is this, to make them feel that even the wilderness with God is better than Egypt without Him, and that He can more than compensate for the loss of all outward comforts. You had a garden, and it was full of life and beauty; the flowers were burdening the air with their fragrance, the ripe clusters were hanging on the vines, the trees were bending with luscious fruit; but a storm came, and trees and flowers were levelled to the ground, and the walls were thrown down, and the garden became a wilderness, a scene of desolation and discomfort. And in the wilderness you have often thought of your beautiful garden: but you have God still, and better lose the garden than lose Him. Place a man in the most exalted position, and surround him with all that nature and art and friendship can supply, and without God will he be happy, think you? No! Put him in heaven itself, and, without sympathy with God, the glory of the throne would be no more welcome to him than the sunlight to birds of darkness, or the glare of a policeman's lamp to a thief. But rob a man of all outward comforts and give him God, and he will be blessed; the night of his adversity will be resonant with songs of praise. Job was led into the wilderness, but he could say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Habakkuk was in the wilderness, but he could say, "Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls-yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." The valiant men who wavered not in their allegiance to God when the hounds of persecution were on their track, who worshipped Him in dens and caves of the earth, who "by the gleam of sheeted lightning oped the sacred Book," could sing in the wilderness, because God was with them.

And this wilderness state is a state of preparation. Why did the Israelites remain forty years in the wilderness, when in a few weeks or days they might have reached the promised land? The training of the wilderness was necessary. Had they entered Canaan at once, they would have been unfit to take possession of it. Degraded and emasculated by slavery, weakened and contaminated by their long residence among idolaters, they were not fit to inherit the land promised to their fathers. By a long course of discipline, training, hardships, they were changed from a multitude of timid slaves into an army of brave men. There is nothing in this life more important than the training of the boy in school, with a view to his trade or profession.

He may not like the training, but it is a good thing for him to bear the yoke in his youth, and it is a bad thing for him to grow up unaccustomed to the yoke. God brings us into the wilderness in order to develope our character. Step by step, stage after stage, we grow up to the perfection of manhood. God does not pain or grieve us willingly; He has no pleasure in it; but He has pleasure in that which it leads to. The iron is thrown into the fire, and beaten on the anvil, and that iron is in the anchor that holds the ship when the storm is raging. The faith that will stand in the storm is the faith that has been tried. The sculptor is cutting the marble; day after day his hammer and chisel are at work; he is not angry with the marble, but he is, as Michael Angelo said, liberating the angel that is in it. And when God is using the sharp tools of affliction and trial upon us, He is working according to a plan, and for a definite end. He leads us into the wilderness, but he is with us there.

3. And He speaks to us. "I will speak comfortably to her." The darkness is followed by light, the storm by a calm, the chastisement by consolation. Literally it is, "I will speak to her heart." God speaks to the heart, not to the intellect merely, but also to the heart. He has truth for the intellect; and there can be no trust without evidence. But He also appeals to the affections, and the affections are the man; to win the affections is to win him. God knows the heart, searches it, and speaks to it. But His words never reach the heart until we have been prepared for them. Why does He lead us into the wilderness? Because amid the world's din and glare we would not hearken to Him. We hear His voice when it is "crying in the wilderness." Why is Sinai thundering over the sinner, and its lightnings dancing around him, and striking him dumb with terror? In order to prepare him to listen to the music of the Gospel. And afflictions are sent to the Christian in order to prepare him for God's message. He was going on carelessly, and becoming negligent of his duties to God, and God leads him into the desert, and there speaks to him. What are the words He speaks? What are the words that reach the heart? The word of forgiveness is one-" Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; say unto her, her iniquity is pardoned." When the sin is forgiven, there is a heavy load taken from the heart. The word of consolation is also for the heart; God comforts His children, and pays especial attention to the crippled child, to the weak child, to the invalids in His family. "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." The little child is terrified in the night, and cries pitifully, but the mother kisses and comforts. And such is God's comfort to His people. And the word of hope will reach the heart. The heart lives on hope. Without hope it would soon die. The promise in the fifteenth verse is, " And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor". -or the valley of trouble" for a door of hope." We have prophecies and earnests here of the inheritance to come. What is the hour of communion with God but a door of hope, opening to give us a

glimpse of the eternal home? What are our Sunday services but doors of hope, through which we may descry from the wilderness the rest that remaineth for the people of God? The door is becoming wider as time advances. The hope is growing brighter. It is the hope of the glory of God. It is the blessed hope. And if sailors after a long and weary voyage are glad when the land breeze fans their brows, and when the welcome cry is heard, "Land ahead! Home, sweet home!"-shall not we rejoice as we are drawing nearer, week after week

"Nearer the Father's house, where the many mansions be,
Nearer the great white throne, nearer the crystal sea"?

Are we making the right use of our Father's discipline? He is drawing you with loving-kindness to-day; He is speaking to you now; He would speak to your heart. To-day, when ye hear His voice, harden not your heart," "Refuse not Him that speaketh from heaven."

FORGIVING.

FOR THE YOUNG,

"I'LL never speak to him again | out on my bush. Now, wasn't that as long as I live! He is a mean, hateful, ugly old

"There, there, my boy! what is the matter? Of whom are you talking? You must not call any one such names."

66

Well, I can't help it! He is hateful, and I hate him, and I'll never speak to him again!

Walter's dark eyes flashed with

anger.

His whole face was flushed with excitement, and, to render his already emphatic words still more! forcible, he stamped one of his little feet violently on the floor.

"Tell me what is the matter, Walter, and whom you are talking about?" said his mother, calmly, as she drew the angry boy gently to her side.

"Why, mother, it is Hiram Graham. He came over here and broke my kite, and when I took it away from him he went straight to my garden and stamped on those pretty verbenas you gave me, and took the only rose that was

hateful in him?"

"It was provoking, but what did you do to him?"

"I put him right out of the gate and bolted it, and then he went home crying.

"I am sorry you and Hiram could not spend a pleasant afternoon without quarrelling. Are you very sure you did not do something to provoke him first? Now, think before you tell me."

Walter thought a moment, and then said, "No, mother, I don't think I provoked him so very much. He stepped backwards and broke my kite, and when I couldn't help crying just a little (for you know, mother, how long it took me to make it), then he called me a crybaby, and said the kite wasn't worth much any way, and I told him it was as good a one as he could make; and he laughed at it, and just broke the rest of the sticks; and then I took it away from him, and said he was mean (and he was,

too); and he said I made a fuss shoulder, while she began-" Once over nothing, and walked straight there was a great king, who lived to my flower garden, and asked in a splendid mansion with his only me if the pretty little crybaby son, the prince, surrounded by wouldn't give him a rose, and I everything that was beautiful, and told him no, he shouldn't have any, having a great number of attendand then he walked round the bush antsand stamped on the other flowers and picked it off, and it was just the one I was saving for Aunt Emily, when she comes to-night, and oh! he is mean and hateful, and I don't see how anybody can

like him!

"Just as all kings have," broke in Walter.

"Yes," continued his mother, "most kings have many attendants, and these spent all their time in serving and praising their great master and his gracious son the

That is just the way Walter told prince. The king had vast posseshis story, with all the "ands," every now and then a great sob coming up so as almost to choke him. He was getting quite excited over his injuries again, so that by the time he had finished, he broke quite down as he laid his head upon his mother's shoulder, and gave vent to his feelings in a hearty cry.

sions, a beautiful garden, noble forests, and clear, lovely streams. He looked out upon it all, and saw that it was good, and yet there was no one to enjoy all this beauty. So he determined to make creatures besides his own attendants to live there, and forthwith he created them, for so great was this king's power that for him to do a thing was but to will it done.

Now, little boys who are reading this, you must not think Walter is a "crybaby" too, for he is in reality a very brave little fellow; but you must know that it is no easy thing for a little boy eight years old to see his new kite spoiled, his garden trampled on, his prettiest flower one that he had been watching and saving for an especial purpose, too -picked, and worse than all, to be called such a name in such a taunting manner. I am not quite sure but what any one of you "Yes, mamma," answered Walter, would have done the selfsame in a very subdued tone, for he was thing if you had been in his place. beginning to recognise the story. But I must go on with my story," But they did not always obey or you will throw down the book, Him."

"As I have said, he made them; then they were perfectly good and pure and holy, fit to live in such a beautiful garden; then he gave them absolute power over all this vast estate, reserving of course his own mansion, and but one thing in the garden did he forbid them to touch. Now, do you not think they should have been very happy and obedient ? ”

and say, "There now! I'm not "No, they did not. Instead of going to read, if you are going to being grateful, and trying to do everything to please their great Author, they ate of the only fruit He had forbidden them."

lecture me."

Well, Walter's mother allowed him to cry on in silence until the most violent of his grief was subdued; then, bathing his heated face, she took him up on her lap, and said she would tell him a story.

"If I had been God, I would

have killed them all straight away," said Walter, as he sat straight up.

"Oh, Walter!" said his mother, Now, stories, especially "really in a tone of mingled surprise and true ones," were Walter's delight, reproach.

so he put his head quietly upon her "But I would," continued Wal