risk of life. A few years ago there were no railroad accidents because there were no railroads, no automobile accidents because there were no automobiles. Men should cultivate the art of carefulness along with their skill in using natural agents.

But Where Does an Overruling Providence Come In?—The question doubtless has suggested itself to your mind, Where does an overruling Providence come in, if there is such a thing? Is it not in connection with the adjustments or applications that are made of the afflictions or catastrophe, as the case may be? If we are true to Him, will not our Father in heaven sanctify our afflictions to our own good and the good of others? How often have we been enabled to see that great public calamities have been turned to good account? And in the case of the individual sufferer there comes in the law of compensation, which we, of course, can not always see. Sometimes we think God is destroying us when He is only developing us. Our disappointments may be God's appointments. Prof. Moulton says: "Suffering is the test of saintship." Job was put to a severe test and he came out pure gold. In the return to him of his family and his fortune there is a remarkable illustration of the law of compensation. This law applies to poverty. In the hardships of poverty the lessons of industry, sobriety, self-reliance and frugality are taught.

Poverty means struggle, and struggle means strength. Shakespeare and Walter Scott, Johnson and Poe and Henry George learned how to serve humanity through their own privations. This law of compensation is especially seen in the case of those who have suffered bodily ailments. It is simply marvelous how many men and women who have achieved great things have been tortured with physical distress. Paul had his thorn in the flesh. Beethoven and Sir Joshua Reynolds were deaf. Milton lost his natural eyesight, but it helped him to see the battle of the angels. The great Angelo had a broken nose. Pope was so crooked by disease he was called an interrogation point. Alfred the Great was afflicted with a disease that did not allow him an hour's rest. Helen Hunt Jackson, and Roebling, the architect of the Brooklyn bridge, were constant sufferers. Out of a long list of invalids, semi or confirmed, I would mention Homer, Virgil, Horace, Pascal, Dante, Cowper, Hawthorne, Carlyle, Bacon, Livingston and Ruskin. It almost seems that some bodily affliction is necessary for the development of man's best latent forces. As the purest gold comes out of the hottest furnace, the brightest characters, other things being equal, come out of suffering. What miraculous patience, what heroic trust, what heavenly tenderness do we often see as a result of suffering? What is true of individuals is true

of nations. The most powerful nations in the world to-day have come to their strength through great conflicts and tribulations. And so it ever is. Day out of night, spring out of winter, flowers out of frost, joy out of sorrow, fruitfulness out of pruning, Olivet out of Gethsemane, life out of death. There is an evolution of good wherever God's love to man finds a response in man's love for God. It is written: "All things work together for good to them that love God." God administers this law of good to all those who give to Him truest affection, and as He gave to Job twice as much as he had before, so out of all life's tribulations and personal sufferings, our reward will be doubled if we maintain an unfaltering faith in Him and are persistently obedient to His commands.

Things Are Not Running at Random.-Whatever view of the sufferings and calamities of life we may take, let us not permit ourselves to conclude that things are running at random in our Father's universe. The chariot of His providence does not run along uncertain lines nor upon broken wheels. The bosom of Divine Providence is the crucible in which there are no loose pulleys on which idle belts career, but in which things work together for the accomplishment of a purpose. The Rev. J. D. Steel, who has traveled much, tells us that "In the cathedral of Pisa is a wonderful dome, spacious, symmetrical, com

posed of the choicest marble. It is a delight to stand beneath and gaze upon its beauty. Thus I stood," he says, "one sunny April day, when suddenly the air became instinct with music. The great dome seemed full of harmony. The waves of music vibrated to and fro, loudly beating against the walls, swelling into full chords, like the roll of a grand organ, and then dying away into soft, long-drawn, far-receding echoes, melting in the distance into silence. It was only my guide, who, lingering behind me a moment, had softly murmured a triple chord. But beneath that magic roof every sound resolved into a symphony. No discord can reach the summit of that dome and live. Every noise made in the building, the slamming of the seats, the tramping of the feet, all the murmur and bustle of the crowd, are caught up, softened, harmonized, blended and echoed back in music."

So it seems to me that over the lives of those who love and trust God hangs the dome of His providence. Standing as we do beneath it, no act in the divine administration toward us, no affliction, no grief, no loss which our Father sends or permits to come to us but will come back at last, softened and blended into harmony, with the overarching dome of His wisdom, mercy and power, until to our corrected sense it shall be the sweetest music of heaven.

OPTIMISM,

OR, THE BRIGht Side of Life and Death.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21.

OSEPH COOK once said: "Man's life con

JOSE

sists of tender teens, teachable twenties, tireless thirties, fiery forties, forcible fifties, serious sixties, sacred seventies, aching eighties, pain, death, sod, God." In these decades of time there is unquestionably much of pain and anguish, cloud and shadow.

Sadness fills a large place in human life, and a much larger place in some lives than in others. Lord Houghton says:

Because the few with signal virtue crowned,

The heights and pinnacles of human mind,
Sadder and wearier than the rest are found,—

Wish not thy soul less wise or less refined.
True, that the clear delights that every day
Cheer and distract the pilgrim are not theirs;
True, that though free from passion's lawless way,
A loftier being brings severer cares;

Yet have they special pleasures-even mirth,—
By those undreamed of who have only trod