instance of help afforded to him in the time of need. He said: 'Some time ago one of my children, a little girl about five or six years of age, was very poorly, and one morning she said to me: "Father, I wish you would stay at home to-day." The request not appearing to him as urgent, made little impression. She, however, reiterated her wish till his wife said to him: 'Well, my dear, as she so much wishes it, perhaps you had better remain at home.' The good brother, therefore, addressed a letter to his employers, the bankers, apologizing for his absence on the score of family affliction. In the evening of the same day he received a letter from one of the firm, expressing their sympathy, and inclosing for his acceptance a forty-pound note. We may easily imagine with what grateful feelings this good brother would retire to rest that night, and how in the morning he would be further instructed in God's dealings with his people, for in the morning the child died. 'Blind unbelief is sure to err,' but one must be blind not to discern in such a case as this 'the providence of God asserted,' and lessons for life and godliness suggested." (John Corderoy.) It is true that we can not solve every problem, every mystery, but why should we seek to? We are not in this life promised the key to all unknown, but perhaps in the other life many now inscrutable mysteries will be explained. We are told that the mind of a pious workman, named Thierney, was much occupied with the ways of God, which appeared to him full of inscrutable mysteries. The two questions, "How?" and "Why?" were constantly in his thoughts, whether he considered his own life, or the dispensations of providence in the government of the world. One day, in visiting a ribbon manufactory, his attention was attracted by an extraordinary piece of machinery. Countless wheels and thousands of threads were twirling in all directions; he could understand nothing of its movements. He was informed, however, that all this motion was connected with the center, where there was a chest which was kept shut. Anxious to understand the principle of the machine, he asked permission to see the interior. "The master has the key," was the reply. The words were like a flash of light. Here was the answer to all the perplexed thoughts. Yes; the Master has the key. He governs and directs all. It is enough. What need I know more? "He hath also established them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass." "When my dim reason would demand Why that or this Thou dost ordain, Be this my joy, that evermore And calmly, sweetly, trust thee still." GOD'S PROVIDENCE, AND HUMAN SUFFERING. "If there be a special providence, why, then, is it good people suffer, and bad people oftentimes flourish and have enjoyment? Here is a good man, and he is poor-his family are oppressed; and there is a bad man rioting in luxury, living in wickedness. Here is a pious woman; she is left a widow, her orphan children are crying for bread; she has no house to shelter them-poor, forsaken, friendless. And there is one in vice living in pomp and luxury. Now, how can it be there is a special providence if all these things occur? I answer, if there were only this world, I could not explain it. If people lived only for this world, I think there would be no key to God's providences; but when I consider this world as but a kind of school-houseif I may use the phrase-that we are away from home, and at school, and simply preparing for life, that other life may be an explanation to all this. Now, for instance, it may be that it might not be best that you and I should be well placed. It may be that if we were we would give way to wickedness, that we would forget God. Many have been estranged from him by the accumulation of wealth. Gaining power and influence, they have become proud, and forgotten the hole of the rock whence they were hewn, or the pit whence they were digged. It might be so with us; and rather than have us lost, God strips us of those things we would like to have here. The question is, Shall we have the things we desire here, and lose heaven, or shall we lose those things here, and gain heaven? I think if the question had been asked Lazarus the day before he died, lying at the rich man's gate, having no friend to wait on him, and the dogs licking his sores, he would have said: 'It is hard to lie on the ground, to lie at the rich man's gate, to have no friend; it is hard that these dogs should come and lick my sores. In yonder house there is luxury, there are friends, there are comforts; it is hard to lie here.' But the next day, when he was in Abraham's bosom, and angels that bore him upward stood around him singing songs of joy, saying, 'One soul more is safe,' was he sad then? Ah! the passage from the cold ground and the rich man's gate to glory was a joyful one. And then afterward, when he looked across the great gulf, and there was the rich man, was he sad? The one on earth had his good things; the other had them reserved for glory. One had them in time; the other in eternity. "It is impossible for us to tell. It may be God's good pleasure that we should suffer, but there is this certainty: whatever way we go heavenward bound, it is the right way. It may be along the banks of the precipice; there may be deep places to go down and high places to go up. Never mind, so we reach glory. The strait path God sees for us, and he is taking us through it; and when we get inside of heaven and look back, we would not have traveled any other way for all creation. There may be flowers just outside the path: our pathway does not lie over the flowers. There may be a smooth walk: it is not for our feet; it is not our pathway to glory. God guides us in the path that will land us safely there; so that the other world oftentimes unlocks the mysteries of this. "Then, besides that, there is another view. We are joined together here by a great many ties. No man liveth for himself. As parents, we affect our children; and oftentimes there may come what is called disaster for the very purpose of doing good to our families, and benefiting the world more largely. I do not know how it would have been in the case of Wesley. I doubt whether the world would ever have been so much benefited if his father had been a rich man, and if his mother had known ease and luxury; but his father was a poor minister, and his mother with her own hands providing for a large household, toiling and suffering, and yet showing a Christian heart and Christian sympathies, and teaching her children, showing them a heroic life in the midst of poverty and toil, and almost wretchedness, implanted such heavenly thoughts in the minds of her sons that they rose to eminence, and they learned to sympathize with the toiling masses. They knew how they lived, and how to drop words of cheer and life and joy into their hearts. There are parents whose death at the time seems inexplicable, and yet it may have been the best thing that could happen to the children. The sons may have been left to struggle, and yet that very struggle may have been essential to the development of their character. Who has not seen the sons of poverty rise to eminence? They have had to hew their own way, and carve their names on the great temple of fame, while the sons of luxury and ease and effeminacy fight no great battles in the world, accomplish no great victories, manifest no great heroism; they simply inherit, and do but little more. There are noble exceptions, here and there; but the law seems to prevail through nature, that those who struggle in infancy and childhood are those who are able to struggle all through life. So I say there may be reasons connected with the life and history and doings of our families that may solve the mysteries that surround us. There are good men who go down in the sea, who die in poverty, who bear life's evils very severely, but it may be all for the best for them; God may see it is just the way in which they should be led themselves, and the way that is best for their families." (Bishop Matthew Simpson.) Part IV WHAT TO BELIEVE CONCERNING REDEMPTION. MORALITY. INTELLECTUAL BASIS OF MORALS. ONSCIOUSNESS is a condition of all knowledge. It is the mind's recognition of its own existence, volitions, and experiences. It is inherent knowledge of our own intellectual phenomena. When I say, "I exist, I think, I feel, I will," I affirm what I know by consciousness to be true. These are not inferences drawn from observation, but facts of my own being given me by consciousness. And so of all knowledge. We know what we know by becoming conscious of it. If you have a sensation, you know that you have it by consciousness. All emotions, fears, hopes, joys, sorrows, desires, choices, doubts, judgments, affirmations, denials, are given us by consciousness. Every thing external to us is known only by impressions upon our minds, and these impressions are revealed by consciousness. Of the impressions we are always certain, and thus far our knowledge is certain, but of the causes of impressions we may be ignorant, and hence be liable to err. "When God spoke from heaven to his Son Jesus, the people who heard were conscious of the sensation upon the auditory nerve. Here was no mistake. But they mistook the cause. They said it thundered. So, in forming our various judgments and opinions, we may mistake, but when consciousness testifies that we do judge or form an opinion, in this we can not be mistaken." In revealing himself to man through the instrumentality of the written Word, God assumed that certain things needed no further statement; man's consciousness of them is sufficient. The Bible never attempts to prove the reality of human existence. Man's knowledge of his own existence is so absolutely certain that further evidence of it would be absurd. So of man's ability to do certain things. The Bible does not tell us in so many words that we are capable of choice, |