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afraid to look within; no Hand beneath him in the struggle, no Presence beside him in the storm. He has no vision of a future to animate and inspire him; he spends his strength daily and for nought; the inner man becoming weaker, sadder, wearier, more heart-sick of it all; until, but for the dread of something after death, he would be ready for the suicide's plunge into the dark river, and the haunted rest of an unhallowed grave. Suffer according to the will of God, and drink in fresh inspiration daily. Suffer according to the will of the flesh, and watch the daily weakening of your noblest powers, the withering of your fairest hopes, the darkening of your brightest visions, as your soul settles down into the night.

2. The one has pure joy in the heart of it, the other pure agony.

Strange as it may seem, the hour of a spiritual man's sharpest suffering is often the hour of his sublimest joy. Why? Because the Lord is with him, drawing the weary form to His bosom, resting the aching head on His heart. Songs in the night! The night of sorrow bright with song! It is not only the sense of the Divine strength which inspires the sufferer; it is the sense of the Divine love that makes him blest. We can bear anything when a loving heart is beating beside us. And shall we faint "under the light affliction" when the very heart of love is gathering us to its embrace? Nay, "Most gladly therefore will we take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake, for when we are weak

then are we strong." The sufferer knows that he is growing into the love of his Father, his Saviour; and is tasting the water of a living fountain, which will be welling up through eternity.

In the heart of the sinful sufferer there is the germ of pure agony. It is hopeless suffering, and that is the anguish of the fiends. There is nothing to make it tolerable. My punishment is greater than I can bear," said the first flagrant sinner. It is the character of all unhallowed suffering; it must break down the strongest strength, it must wear out the most resolute will at last. Suffering without hope! It is the anguish of the pit. And your suffering in sin, loving it and cleaving to it, is of this essence. The sharper it becomes the more dire the agony, the darker, the more horrible the despair.

3. The one has its end in glory, the other in shame and everlasting contempt.

Men are willing to suffer for a crown, to struggle for a prize. What would life be without its future? No matter what burden you may bear, what moan you may mutter, if "this light affliction, which is but for a moment," is working for you "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." It will matter little when God lifts up your head with honour, in the day of the manifestation of His sons. Nay, it will matter much. "Ye are they which continued with Me in my temptation, and I appoint unto you a kingdom." These sufferings will be the theme of the most blessed communion, the seeds of the purest joys, the most radiant glories of eternity. These,

who have suffered according to the will of God, shall awake to everlasting life, and those, who have suffered according to the will of the flesh, shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt.

Fellow sinner, fellow sufferer! We are the heirs of the same bitter inheritance of sorrow through sin. Will you have God's light upon it, God's love in it; or the devil's darkness, the devil's curse? Suffer you must. Escape you cannot. But, oh! see to it, see to it, that when your hour of anguish comes upon you, you have God and Christ upon your side.

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XI.

THE SACRED DARKNESS.

"Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God."-Is. 1. 10.

Is it by chance, think you, that the prophecies of Isaiah are laden with such a burden of sympathy with the sufferings of Messiah, and with such dark foreshadowings of the agony and bloody sweat, the cross and passion, the death and burial, in which, to the eye of sense, that mission of love would end? Of all the sacred writers, it is Isaiah who paints the most pathetic pictures of the Man of Sorrows, and of the Life of Sorrows. The thorn crown and the bloody spear, though the mist of ages intervened, were not hidden from his sight. There were moments when there crossed his vision a splendid heroic form, the form of a conquering king, crushing his foes beneath the wheels of his triumphal chariot, as he thundered on amid universal acclamation to the empire of the world. But there lingered before his sight the form of another King, with the stain of tears upon His cheek, and the drops of bloody sweat upon His brow. He was pallid, worn with watching, weak with hunger,

emaciated by a life of conflict and pain. He was crowned, but the thorns of His crown pierced Him; He was robed, but in the mocking purple with which He had been invested by His insolent guard. There were throngs of His subjects round Him, but they cried out, Away with Him, away with Him; and they dragged Him at length through a brutal, jeering rabble to enthrone Him on a cross. The King whom Isaiah saw was "despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and they hid as it were their faces from Him, He was despised, and they esteemed Him not."

And the prophet paints it all as one who saw, and whose soul was filled with shame, with anguish, and with unutterable pity, at the spectacle. The men who lived with Messiah and who beheld His passion, have not left to us such pathetic records as these. This greatest and most far-seeing of those who "spake beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow," dwells with peculiar tenderness on His lonely and forsaken lot, on the cup of human anguish of which His soul alone knew all the bitterness, and of that desert path, the whole gloom and horror of which He alone explored. Was is by chance, I say, that this royal prophetic spirit was led to fathom these depths of Messiah's sorrow, and to strike thus early the sad key-note of His history? Or had he himself tasted this cup of bitterness? Had he himself, in his finite human measure, been "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief"?

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