and the Lives of the Martyrs. Had he not been imprisoned, he would have lived and died, as do many other men, known perhaps, and useful, within the limits of a single town, and for a single generation. But, shut up in prison, and cut off from worldly plans, God was enabled to work in him, in his own wonderful way, and to guide his mind to other and higher issues. It was there he wrote that remarkable work, the Pilgrim's Progress. Had his enemies not been allowed to prevail against him, it probably would not have been written. It was thus that God turned that which was designed for evil into good. It was a wisdom higher than man's wisdom, which shut up the pilgrim himself in prison. The Pilgrim's Progress, which was the result of the imprisonment of the pilgrim whose progress it describes, free as the winds of heaven, goes from house to house, knocks at every heart, teaches all classes, visits all nations.

7. Nearly at the same time with the pious individual to whom we have just referred, there lived in England another person, whose extraordinary powers of intellect and imagination were developed and cultivated in the best institutions of that country. In the revolutionary contests of that period, his pen, exuberant with the riches of thought and eloquence, was frequently employed with great effect. He became blind. The sun, the pleasant sky, the societies of men, were all shut out from him. "These eyes," he says in one of the sonnets written in his blindness,

"Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or stars, throughout the year,

Or man or woman."

He was, indeed, in a dark and solitary place; but it

was God, who, in the administration of his providence, constructed it for him. And there, in what seemed to the world a lonely prison-house, the light of the soul grew bright in the darkness of the body; and he wrote. the Paradise Lost. In the enlargements of his own will, when he went where he chose to go, he gave his powers, too great to be thus limited, to a party; but, in what may be termed the solitude and captivity of God, he gave himself to religion and to mankind.

8. Wisdom can never be separated from providence, nor can goodness. And the darker the providence, the greater the wisdom. Souls that are formed for great and good purposes are so especially the objects of Providence, in its most mysterious arrangements, that they may be called, with scarcely a metaphorical use of the expression, the prisoners of God. For reasons which are perfectly known only to himself, they are hedged in by him on every side. He does with them what he thinks best; and he does not allow them, in the exercise of their own wisdom, to think what is best for themselves, because he intends to make them the subjects of his teachings, as well as the instruments of his own designs. The way in which he leads them is not only a narrow one, and built up with walls on every side, but is often precipitous, and, to human sight, full of dangers. But out of that road they find, if they follow the true light, they have no liberty to go; and in it they must receive, not what they might choose, but what God sees fit to give them. He smites them, and he heals them; he pours light upon their path, or he leaves them in sudden darkness. "They are clay in the hands of the potter." They are broken to pieces, that out of their earthly fragments he may build up a heavenly habitation. He makes them nothing, that they may have divine

strength. He cuts them loose from the creature, that they may be made receptive of the Creator. But in everything there is wisdom. Men may not see it; but it is there.

THE LIGHT ABOVE US.
There is a light in yonder skies,
A light unseen by outward eyes;
But clear and bright to inward sense,
It shines, the star of Providence.

The radiance of the central throne,
It comes from God, and God alone;
The ray that never yet grew pale,
The star, that "shines within the veil."

And faith, unchecked by earthly fears,
Shall lift its eye, though filled with tears,
And while around 'tis dark as night,
Untired, shall mark that heavenly light.

In vain they smite me,

men but do

What God permits, with different view;
To outward sight they wield the rod,
But faith proclaims it all of God.

Unmoved, then, let me keep my way,
Supported by that cheering ray,
Which, shining distant, renders clear
The clouds and darkness thronging near.*

*Life of Madame Guyon, vol. ii. p. 317.

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE RELATION OF PROVIDENCE TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH.

The arrangements of Providence to the spiritual growth what the earth is to natural growth. The analogy between the two extended to particulars. Importance of remaining quiet under the operations of Providence. Illustrations of the subject. Remarks.

WE proceed now to a view of Providence, which commends itself to the special consideration of Christians. Providence, considered as the divine arrangement of things in relation to men, is the Lord's spiritual garden. It is to the spiritual growth what the earth is to the germination and growth of material products. If it be true, that the earth is the appointed instrumentality, through which and by which the seeds of things grow up, it is not the less true, though it may be less obvious, that the arrangements of Providence, spread out in the wide and variegated surface of things and events, constitute, in like manner, the instrumentality, the receptive and productive medium, in which the seed of the spiritual life is to be planted, to germinate and perfect itself.

2. The analogy is not limited to the productive medium. It extends to that which is produced, and also to the manner of production. The seed, which is planted in the earth, is a dead seed. So man's soul, when it is first cast into the soil of God's providence, is a dead seed. They are both alike dead, the material seed and the seed of immortality.

But neither the ground of nature nor that of providence, into which they are first received, would of itself alone reproduce them to a new life. To the natural seed, when planted in the earth, there must be applied the rain and the sunshine before it can be decomposed, incorporated with new elements, and vivified with new life and beauty. The earth, operating in connection with these exterior helps, takes off and removes the outer coats of the seed, until it reaches the central principle, which had been encrusted and shut out from all the benign influences of the sun and atmosphere, and with its fostering care rears it up from its embryo of existence to its developed and beautiful perfection. In like manner, when the seed of man's immortal spirit is planted in the midst of God's providences, it is not till the influences of the Holy Spirit are applied, that it is decomposed, if we may so express it, by a separation of the good and evil, and the eternal element, deprived of life by reason of sin, is made alive in the spiritual regeneration.

The analogy in the two cases is a very close one. The encircling system of providential arrangements, operating in connection with the aiding energy of God's Spirit, removes coat after coat of that selfishness which had enveloped and paralyzed every faculty; and reaching at last the central element of the soul, the principle of love, which had suffered this dreadful perversion, it restores it to that life, light, and beauty, from which it had wickedly fallen.

3. But neither the garden of providence nor that of nature can do its work, unless the seed which is planted remain quiet in its position. If the material seed, under the pretence that a moister or drier, a richer or poorer, soil is better, or for any other reason, is removed from