"Love betters what is best Even here below, but more in heaven above."1 Shakspere affords the following explanation of the mystery, which is both philosophical and satisfactory, when the Duke, in "Measure for Measure," says "Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love." Of Divine love, Thomas à Kempis has well said— "Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good; by itself it makes everything that is heavy, light; and it bears evenly all that is uneven. Nothing is sweeter than Love, nothing more courageous, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller nor better in Heaven and earth; because Love is born of God, and cannot rest but in God, above all created things. . . . . . . The noble love of JESUS impels a man to do great things, and stirs him up to be always longing for what is more perfect." If beauty be perfect, it is only through God's comeliness. This harmony of love is religion; which, says Archdeacon Hare, "presents few difficulties to the humble, many to the proud, and insuperable ones to the vain." Mrs. Browning also writes in one of her exquisite "Sonnets from the Portuguese," "There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures 1 Translated by Wordsworth. 2 "Imitation of Christ." Parker's ed., pp. 70, 71. 3 Ezk. xxvi. 14. 4 Poems, vol. ii., p. 447. Accepted, and partakers of Divine love through Christ by the Holy Spirit, we are แ "Taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm." For, as Aubrey de Vere beautifully puts it— "The single eye alone can see All truths around us thrown, In their eternal unity; The humble ear alone Has room to hold and time to prize Of the origin of evil-the existence of which manifestly dims man's perception of these harmonies-we know absolutely nothing; but that it is permitted for all-wise ends, we are justified in affirming. Antagonisms, dualities, or opposite poles, such as light, darkness, positive, negative, &c., exist everywhere around us. Man's free agency and state of probation implied on the one hand his power to stand, and, on the other, his liability to err. He fell from his first estate, and sin brought suffering in its train. These attendant sufferings have been well named trials. In the first instance, however, they are merited punishments - penalties exacted where law has been violated-effect following cause. As we sow, so shall we reap, and certain results are predicable of a given line of conduct; but both the means and the end are fore-ordained. Shakspere says, "Men, at some time, are masters of their fates; 1 "Waldenses, and other Poems," p. 165. and also "There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." He elsewhere observes in the same strain— "This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on." And again "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky Strange that this desire to repudiate moral responsibility for evil deeds, and, along with it, the doctrine of salvation by grace, should so often be met with in the same individual; works being generally substituted as the ground of hope, where there is least to boast of in that kind. Bailey shrewdly writes "The Good Are never fatalists, the bad alone Act from necessity they say." Coleridge has eloquently said, "If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!" The most commonly accepted maxims of wordly wisdom are too frequently tinged and vitiated by selfishness; Ben Jonson's words, "the shadow of the world's eclipsed your judgment," finding too many illustrations around us. It lurks even where these are in the right direction: e.g., in the saying "honesty is the best policy," the consequent of virtue is made the end thereof. In short, as might be expected, the majority of such current rules are "after the rudiments of the world, not after Christ," and are totally inadequate for this life's guidance. True love and self-negation ever go hand in hand, "For loftiest things Snow-like are purest."2 Man, made to feel the utter worthlessness of his own best righteousness, through the perfect righteousness and finished work of Christ, approaches with confidence the throne of the Eternal. In the sudden prospect of Death, or under great afflictions, man instinctively calls on his God. Drawn into closer and habitual communion with the great Creator, no longer by fear, but through a sense of the surpassing riches of redeeming Love, the prayer of faith will ascend like incense before the throne, and the trial be either removed, or grace and strength given to endure it patiently to the end. "For which cause," says Paul, writing to the Corinthians, "we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." On the extent and degree to which prayer 2" Bailey's Mystic." 1 Col. ii. 8. may proximately affect the government of God's universe, we cannot speculate; nor can we on the other hand sympathise with those to whom this subject presents insurmountable obstacles. Whatever its influence may be, all is provided for in the depths of infinite wisdom: even seeming perturbations are, we may infer, only adjustments of deeper and more complex movements, and are doubtless essential to the perfect harmony of the whole. To take the common illustration of a child in a little open boat which is fastened by a line to a large vessel. Should he attempt to draw the ship towards him, he himself is thereby brought closer to it. There is doubtless also a slight change of place in the larger vessel, which, though imperceptibly small, can nevertheless be calculated, but the motion of the little boat is very apparent to all observers. The end for which the effort was made is thus virtually attained, though brought about in a different manner from that which the child dreams. To higher intelligences, many mysteries may be resolved into the simple operation of common laws, pre-determined and fixed from all eternity. Prayer heard, is prayer answered; nay it stands written, "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before you ask him." It has been beautifully said, that "To prayer every gate Of every palace opens, like a flower The odorous home of lightness, coolness, warmth." 1 "Prayer," says Jeremy Taylor "is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recol 1 Bailey. |