promises, or to accept what God offers. And yet that we find beginners in the Christian life, and even experienced Christians, often do, especially when what God provides is not just "according to their mind." Noto also how tho very freeness of God's gifts makes them unacceptable to human pride. We like to have things on our conditions, and at our price, II. "I WILL CALL UPON TIIE NAME OF THE Loao." That is, in the spirit and act of thankfulness. Tbankfolness should bo regarded (1) as an important Christian obligation; (2) as an enjoined Christian duty; and (3) as a most real help to the brightness, the joyfulness, and the steadiness of the Christian life. The utterance of thankfulness is a public testimony of our recognized and happy dependence on God. "I have set the Lord always before me," III. "I WILL PAY MY vows UNTO THE LoRo." Give some account of Jewish vow- making in times of special thankfulness; as when recovering from a serious sickness. 1. Sincere and right-intentioned, vow-making is acceptable and pleasing to God. 2. The earnest endeavour at vow-paying is much more acceptable. Our resolves match the ancient vows; and our lives have witnessed many resolves made and few resolves carried out. Illust.: resolves in times of conversion, of success, of sickness, of trouble, of rescue from peril. Try to think what unpaid vows or resolves of yours God has on his record. Vow, but be sure to " pay your vows unto the Lord."-R. T. Ver. 15.-0onsolations for the bereaved. Health and sickness, joy and sorrow, life and death, are strangely intermingled in the stories of human lives. They are the threads, the warp and the weft, of which the web of life is woven. Until sin is gone, it is better for us to keep the sorrows and the sicknesses and even the dyings; for these are God's agents for stamping upon sin its true character, and he makes them to be but the anguish of our deliverance from siu's power and dominion. In our times of bereavement we ought to know- I. 'l'HAT THE DEATH OF OUB BELOVED ONES 18 A PBE0IOUS THING TO Goo. These "deathli" are certainly very precious things to m, whether they come as a sudden call or follow upon many days of weary watching. There is peculiar sacredness in a time of dea.th for a family. 'l'he family bond never seems so closely knit as then, Each member makes so much of ea.eh other member in those hours of common sorrow. Our text says that the dying of our friends is so precious to God. We may think of God as our Father; as one of our family, the very Head of our family, and therefore the one on whom the heaviest part of the burden falls. No one feels so deeply as the father and the mother; and in calling himself the great Father, be unveils a. heart of infinite sympathy, that "bears our griefs, a.nd carries our sorrows." How God feels toward us finds its illustration in the manifested God-Christ Jesus. The sympathies of Nain, the tears of Bethany, show us our God. 'l'be death of the saint is so precious to God: 1. Because the trust of the dying is so severely tested. What the mysterious conflicts of the time of death are none of us can know, perhaps none of us can imagine. In perilous disease we may have been to the "border-land ; " but, then, the border-land is a very wide space, and we have not really felt what it is for the soul fully to face the eternal 'l'he struggle must be a great and sore one, for even the best of men, when they come to die, have a time duriog which their faith seems to fail, and their hope to die out. It is a. most "precious" tbiag to God for a. human soul to be in struggle. 2. Because the living who are left are so overwhelmed with sorrow. Of the heavenly sphere it is said, "And God shall wipe a.way all tears from their eyes." That means that the sympathy felt by God in their tear-bringing sorrows will by-and-by be able to express itself without limit or hindrance. Our teard are precious things to our heavenly Father, though, fur the holiest ends, he may bid them flow on while we tarry here below. 3. 1:3ecause thro!-lgh death ~od_ brings_ his childre~ bo~e. to h!mself. To him death is precious; be thmks about 1t, 1s anxious about 1t, re.101ces m the anticipation of that which follows it, looks on it much as the parent loo~s on the perilous journey which brings bis absent child hom~. If we could always think_ of our beloved as gone home to our Father and theirs, their death would b~come prec1ou~ t-0 us. We think of them as dead, gone from earthly love and fellowsh1p. Better tbrnk 'lf them as having found the true love and the eternal fellowship. ll, THAT THE DEATB OF OUB FRIENDS FITS IN WITH Goo's PERFECT AND LOVIN& I'S, CXVI, 1-19.] THE BOOK OF PSALMS, 83
PLAN FOB us. When we look over our past lives we often can see the wisdom and goodness manifested in isolated scenes and incidents; but we fail to see the wonderful ways in which the various experiences fit in together. It is not always an easy thin er to discern what the common things have to do with the special things, or how the spc~ial things have become necessary in order to teach more effectively the lessons learned from the common things, We fail to discern the plan. God!s plan in our life is n<!t at present offered to our comprehension. It is offered to our faith. Our life is a worked pattern of various colours; the pattern is large, and it scarcely comes out until it is nearly complete. Our life is a complicated mosaic, and each day new shapes and new colours are added. God makes the pattern complete, but keeps it for a heaven-view. III, THAT THE MYSTERY HANGING ABOUT THE DEATH OF OUR BELOVED WILL ONE DAY BE DISPELLED, Familiar as we are with death, its ways always seem strange to 119. We think it bas stricken the wrong person; it has come at the wrong time; or it has done its work in the wrong way. Sometimes Death comes too suddenly. In a moment our friend went in, and all left to us was the outer robe flung off as he passed through. Sometimes Death tarries wearyingly. Sometimes Death gathers about him circumstances which add peculiar painfulness to the death-scenes. We incline to say, "It is all wrong." And yet it is God who arranges it. The wise God. The faithful Creator, The loving Father. It is precious to him. "Thou shalt know hereafter.'' Let us wait. We all have some mysteries to keep until the time for unfolding mysteries shall come. By-and-by "we shall know as we aro known."-R. T,