THE PILLAR OF CLOUD AND FIRE.
When we buffet with a baffling tempest, how gladdening is the glimmer even of a lamp seen through the drift, telling us of comfort and of home! When we have long been driven by the waves and tost, so that hope has fled and exertion become paralysed, how welcome the haven of our rest! When strangers have long been our only associates in a foreign land, where no familiar face was near to greet us with its smile, how pleasant to know
“There is an eye will mark
Our coming, and look brighter when we come!”
—And how much more gladdening that Word of God which irradiates the path of a believer, THE PILLAR
OF CLOUD
AND FIRE. a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night! In joy or in sorrow, in youth or in age, in his home, in his place of toil or of business, amid unceasing activities, or when the sands of life are ebbing low, such a man has a directory at every hour of need, a counsellor in every difficulty—enough to crown his weary life with a portion of the joy of his God.
THE HALCYON.
THE
HALCYON. We meet with some who have manifestly no guide but passion, or feeling, or human opinion. They therefore live in a state of constant fretfulness and mental fever, at once troubling and troubled. While others have an anchor cast within the veil, these men are driven by the wind and tost. Some are kept in perfect peace, even amid the agitations of life; they are like the little bird which is said to build its nest amid the breakers of the sea, and is most calm when perched on the crest of an angry wave. Others are like the restless sea; and whence this difference? The divine directory is in the hand of the one class; it is ignored or perverted by the other. The divine mind is the mind of the one; caprice and the changing passions of a troubled soul form the standard or the tyrant of the other. To the one, truth is truth, in the heart, the home, and the place of public resort; to the other, truth is but a name.—The bodies of those who live under a directly vertical sun, reflect no shadow; at least their shadow is under their feet, and these shadowless bodies are emblems of the condition of those who live nearest to the Sun of Righteousness: like the children of the light, they are preparing for the world where there is neither shadow nor night.
THE ORNAMENT OF LIFE.
THE
ORNAMENT
OF LIFE. But godliness is the Ornament of life as well as its Director.
And what is it that constitutes the beauty of a soul?—All that God has made is lovely according to its kind. Look at the little flower, and see what beauties beam upon us there. Contemplate the firmament above us, the meet type of Jehovah’s immensity; and mark the surprising loveliness which is there. Or examine the winged insect which buzzes around us, only, perhaps, to vex and to annoy—there are more beauties and more marks of wisdom in that little thing, than the science of man has yet been able to tell. Now, if even these mean, these transient, and ephemeral things, are clothed in loveliness by God, may we not expect a more exquisite beauty in that immortal thing, the soul of man? It was once in the image of God; it is capable of wearing that image again. And what is it that constitutes its beauty?