F with many and deep expressions of thankfulness, returned to tell his wife all about it. How they chatted over it that evening, and praised the vicar, and how they tried to repress their angry feelings towards those who had done the wrong, must be imagined: but both George and his wife, as they kneeled down that night, felt that they had learned a new meaning of the prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against The next Sunday the good vicar preached a sermon from this text, Eph. iv. 25: "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour; for we are members one of another." A good many looked at one another when the text was given out, and some guilty consciences anticipated the deserved rebuke. But it was not his object to give pain, but to win to repentance and bring about a reform among the scandal-mongers of the village; so he began by pointing out what lying was, and how many people told lies who did not exactly say what wasn't true, but who tried to make others believe what was not true. If, he said, you knew one thing was true and tried to make any one believe something else, you told a lie. If you tried to throw suspicion on an innocent person (here Mrs. Cross looked very red, and Mr. Crabs very sheepish), you told a lie, though you might not accuse him in actual words; and he said those who circulated a report of that kind were next in sin to those who started it; whereat Mr. Backbite got uneasy, and poor Chips blushed all over his bald head. Then he went on to tell them about other kinds of lies, about being careless about telling the truth, and how much mischief was done by it; and how it was telling a lie often only to tell part of the truth, or to put a colouring upon it, as people did when, as it was commonly called, "they drew the long bow." Then he went on with increased earnestness in his tone and manner as he told them how sure lies were to be found out sooner or later, and how God would judge those who told them. Amid the silence even of the little children he told them of Ananias and Sapphira, and then of those awful words, "All liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, that is the second death.” "Wherefore," he said, "take heed to the words of the holy apostle, and 'putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour.' Take heed ever to speak the truth, ever to live the truth, and ever to discourage, by practice and example, the guilty habit of circulating evil rumours or malicious reports; for all are members one of another.'" The vicar's sermon was talked of in many a cottage that day and for many days after; and though I fear the bad practice from which George Willis suffered did not entirely cease in Mudford, yet many learned to restrain their tongues and be more careful how they circulated stories that would give their neighbours pain. Mrs. Cross, too, whose malicious tongue was always too ready to be employed, got into disgrace about some things that she took of a bad poaching man, and narrowly escaped prosecution as a receiver of stolen goods; so that she dared not say much about others for fear of what they might say of her. George's character became established beyond fear of scandal, and if the little trouble made him yet more careful over both his words and actions, why it did him good not harm. SONGS IN THE NIGHT OF AFFLICTION.* ACCORDING to the figure of one of our old writers, it is when herbs are crushed that they give forth their sweetest fragrance. So it has always been in the time of sorrow that the Christian life has expressed itself most sweetly in song. The cry which has then gone up from the burdened heart to God, has become the de profundis of the church in all ages, the expression of Christian confidence and hope in time of deepest sadness. For each song which has broken forth from the heart when overflowing with joy, probably ten might be found which have been forced from it by the pressure of sorrow. Though they close in triumph, these melodies are oftenest set to the key-note of sadness. They at least begin, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?" "If you listen to the strains of David's harp," says Bacon, " you shall hear more hearse-like airs than carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath been more employed in depicting the afflictions of Job than the prosperity of Solomon." Many of the * From a volume just published by the entitled, "Who giveth Songs in the Night. Sorrowing Children of God." Religious Tract Society, hymns which cheer the heart of the Christian church now, and which have become almost sacred as the expression of Christian confidence and hope in the midst of sorrow, have been wrung out of the poet's heart by severest trial, pressed out," as one of the German hymn-writers says of his, "by the dear cross," in time of suffering or deep anxiety. 66 But it is only through the gospel that sorrow can thus be turned into song. It is only faith in Christ which can transform and beautify grief. Only through the hopes which he bids us cherish, can our afflictions "yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness." Apart from the grace of God, the influence of sorrow is depressing and degrading. Burden a man with heavy trials, strip him of his earthly possessions, subject him to the grinding evils of poverty, or inflict upon him personal suffering, and his energies will droop, he will lose his self-respect, he will grow selfish and exacting. The pressure of poverty has often changed the generous and trusting into suspicious misers. The irritation of perpetual pain has made life a weariness, not only to the sufferer, but to all who came within his reach. But let Christ's love touch the heart, let a man recognise, through faith in him, his own part in his purposes of grace, and all is changed. The fiery trial becomes a fire of purification as well as a test of genuineness. Poverty is borne with a dignity which wins respect. Suffering but serves to bring out into bolder and yet more graceful relief the half-concealed virtues of his Christian character. Sorrow has thus a refining influence. Even the face of the man who has "suffered and been strong," not in the stoicism of human pride, but in the grace of Christ, bears witness of this result. His look, at once subdued and elevated, softtened and strengthened, tells of His wise discipline whose purpose in trying us as silver is tried " is to be " a refiner and purifier." The history of the patriarch Job shows us how character gains in breadth and dignity, as well as in true holiness, by sanctified affliction. What noble expressions of confidence in God break through and relieve the darkness, even in the time of his saddest complaints. The light of God's countenance in which he was wont to live seems changed into angry darkness-the darkness of a fierce tempest of wrath: the hand which he had been accustomed to see stretched out for his protection and guidance seems uplifted 66 Though What a noble to destroy; yet he can say, even while his sorrow tempts him to think he is in the hands of a pitiless fate, he slay me, yet will I trust in him."* utterance of confidence, too, is that in the nineteenth chapter! He had reached there the very climax of his affliction it was scarcely possible even for his friends to wound him more deeply than they had done. He is constrained, in the bitterness of his anguish, to cry to them for pity. But the deepest sorrow was that God seemed to be his foe. "Know now,” he says, "that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard; I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths. He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope hath he removed like a tree. He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies." Yet it was even here that he gives utterance to one of the most triumphant expressions of confidence in God which ever broke through the night of affliction, and which, in its deep and farreaching meaning, has become for us the expression of a confidence which Job himself could not in all its fulness feel "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." What a glorious song for the night was that with which the Almighty himself "answers Job out of the whirlwind," and brings him to confess himself vile, and to abhor himself, ere he crowns him again with lovingkindness and with tender mercies! The dramatic force of the whole book is remarkable. We are admitted, as it were, into the secrets of the Divine arrangements, and see that he does not afflict willingly. Opportunity is given, for wise and gracious purposes, to the powers of darkness. We see the gathering forces of the storm. We hear the moaning of the wind, the distant muttering of the thunder. The storm begins, and each flash, as it bursts forth from the dark tempest-cloud, smites some joy, levels with the dust some hope. Every refuge is destroyed, and, helpless and outcast, he "bides the pelting of the pitiless storm." His + Job xix. 6-11. *Job xiii. 15. Job xxxviii. 1. spirit chafes in its distress, and he cries out against his hard fate. The opened heavens reply with yet more terrible manifestations of the Divine power. At last God himself speaks. Then, and then only, the sufferer bows in deep submission, and says, "I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not: things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."* The storm passes. His confidence in his deliverer, whose visitation had preserved his spirit in the darkest hour of sorrow, is fully justified, and "thanksgiving and the voice of melody" fitly close the scene. Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of song in the night of sorrow is that furnished by the life of the poet Cowper. The facts of his history are so well known, that only a brief recapitulation of them is necessary. Left an orphan at a very early age, with a mind extremely sensitive to impressions of sadness, his spirit almost broke down under the treatment which he received at school from one of the elder boys. Such was his fear of him that he never dared look higher than his shoe-buckles. In the most cheerful hours of his advanced life, he could never advert to this season without shuddering at the recollection of its wretchedness. His nervousness increased with his years; and when his office rendered it necessary for him to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, his terror became so great that his mind gave way. He attempted more than once to commit suicide, and ultimately became insane. By God's blessing he recovered for a time, but the tendency to insanity remained. A happy change, the great change, at this time took place in him. Under the care of Dr. Cotton, he not only recovered from his mental depression, but was relieved from the religious despondency under which he laboured. This juster and happier view of evangelical truth is said to have arisen in his mind while he was reading the third chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The words that riveted his attention were the following: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his *Job xlii. 2-6. |