SERENA'S SERMON.
"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened."—Malachi iii. 16.
We beseech Thee, O Lord, to hear us, for we fear Thee and love Thee. We are separated from those we love; we cannot speak to them, or they to us; we have little prospect before us of ever seeing them again; but we have the gracious Lord to speak to, and we have His gracious promise that He will hear us. Through our Father in Heaven we can hold intercourse with our Father on earth. We pray for him, and we know God heareth the prayer that goeth not out of feigned lips. He prays for us, and God heareth him, as we see daily, hourly, in the lovely place allotted to us, in the fruits that rise before us, in the flowers that spring up to our hands, in the love we bear each other, and, oh, more than all, in the privilege that we may speak to each other of the Lord's mercies and loving kindnesses, and know that he heareth us, for Jesus Christ's sake. Then let us remember, should despondency overwhelm us, or sorrow cast her gloomy mantle upon us, that this land is not our "abiding place," that here we have no "continuing city," but that beyond the tomb we have an house prepared, not made with hands, where we shall not only meet those from whom we have been torn in this life, but such things "as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive."