268 risen hard and loveless as before. It seemed to her that behind her many cares and much weariness God had hidden his face. On this Sunday in church she felt that she did not really pray. Each petition as she strove to drive it upwards fell to the earth, unheard as it seemed to her, unheard as it is possible it may in reality have been. His ways are past finding out: thank God it is so! If it were not so, He were indeed no God. Once in the glorious Litany, with "strong crying and tears," she joined her voice and heart to that of the congregation, 66 That it may please thee to defend and provide for the fatherless children . . . . and all that are desolate and oppressed!" But for the sermon she longed with an intense longing and an eager hope. Some new word, some blessed thought, might rouse her, and melt the stubbornness at her heart. Nay, she even prayed, with bent head when the prayers were ended and there was a When pause of silence, that it might be so. she raised her head, the clergyman who had read had given up his place in the pulpit to another. A man rather above the middle height, with a face so thin and pale that Margaret stamped him immediately as an ascetic, rose from his knees, and from thin, firm lips gave out in a distinct and sonorous voice the text, "God with us." He paused and looked quietly around the church. The faint colour that had been on his face when he rose from his knees died He took up his handkerchief, slowly away. passed it over his lips, and repeated, "God with us." "Not to those," began the preacher, "who deny the existence of God, nor to those who would make for themselves a private god-I may use the word, I hope, without irreverence, seeing that I can find no other to express my meaning-not to those who fashion to themselves a being whom they can understand, and strive to make Infinity finite -not to such would I address myself to-day. "In our large towns and cities, where godlessness and open sin walk hand in hand, where atheism flaunts itself unshamed in the broadest light of day and has its hundreds of disciples-it is our duty, as ambassadors for God, to protest against this open rebellion, this bold-faced disavowal of our King. "But in this country church, in the midst of the fairest, freshest bounties of the Lord of all the earth, in the face of that smiling ever-praiseful nature in which you, my hearers, are set, I purpose more to speak to "To you, therefore, to whom my text is familiar, I address myself. To you who have hitherto accepted the great truth which it contains. How it is accepted, in how limited a manner, and what influence the acceptation bears upon our life, I hope in turn to consider. Lastly, I would lay before you the reasons I find for believing that we may accept it, in a very grand, and lofty, and extensive sense. "Firstly, then, how it is accepted. And I need not repeat that I mean by the avowed professors of Christianity. God with us.' Sometimes we have it as a text at Christmas. It then conveys to us the remembrance of the actual presence of our Saviour on the earth. According to our various dispositions or imaginations the mind leads us from this point to other things. To the Babe in the manger, his mission, his sorrows, his death, to his ascension, when like a cloud He vanished from our sight; perhaps to the message He left for us about the 'little while again. yet further, perhaps, to his coming Again, to some very simple minds, I believe to the mind of every child, the God who we are told is 'with us,' takes the form of a human being. Kind to the good, a punisher of the wicked, seated upon a throne, and following with a judicial eye the footsteps of all earth's little children. "Or again, do we not sometimes (some of us, I fear, at all times) view Him as an abstract Being, ruling the universe perhaps, but quite apart from us men and our doings? "Or as a fate, from which we cannot by any means escape? "Or as perfect holiness without the eiement of love, failing which, holiness is no longer holiness? Brethren, the God of all the earth has mercy so vast that none dare exclude his brother from his presence, nor condemn any conception of Him, so long as it savours not of irreverence and unbelief. But may we not hope to enlarge our own miserable and small conceptions? The age is progressing, science is progressing, all things are progressing around us: why, then, should belief wax cold, and our ideas of God alone remain stunted? Nay, they have shrunken and grown small, for David of all men had the most elevated and enlarged conception of his Creator and his friend; and David lived a thousand years before Christ. "And it is in this way that our ideas may be enlarged. By extending God every way, if so I may speak; not raising Him to that pinnacle of greatness at which He cannot reach us, but giving Him all power as well as all glory. And all power does not concern itself with mighty things alone, but with all things, small or great. He that could say, 'Arise, take up thy bed,' to him that could not rise, could also forgive all sin. He that made a universe can make a man to walk upon one small spot of that universe. Our Creator, and yet our Father and our Friend, our elder Brother, and our King, our High Priest and the Lamb for sacrifice. "But I anticipate; for I would now speak to you of the cold and meagre acceptation of this truth as shown by the influence--shall I say the lack of influence?-it has upon our lives. "Do we believe in the continual presence of God when we use in common conversation the words' chance,' 'luck,' misfortune,' 'accident?' If He is with us,' He is not a passive observer, I imagine, but an Agent, a Father, a directing hand. "Do we believe in God's actual presence when we speak of Him with irreverence, with distrust-when we drive his Spirit from the inner temple by lightness or by wilful sin? "Do we believe that He is with us when we fret continually under a petty trial, under a trial of any sort or kind, and struggle restlessly to be free from that which He has suffered shall be for a little time our portion? Do we believe that the grave is in his hand, and that through the dark valley He leads us when we murmur and rebel (I do not say when we mourn, for to mourn is Christ-like, and is blessed), that one whom we would have here is taken to a better country? "My brethren, surely to believe is not to realise. We all believe that God is with us; how many realise it as a noble truth? . . "But while I speak, a certain disease of man's soul comes to my remembrance; and lest any in this place should now labour, or in bygone times have laboured, under it, I would, by the help of the God who is with us, speak a word of comfort and of hope. "The disease I mean is an inability to realise the presence of God. "You have all felt, my hearers, I am persuaded, more or less, aware of it or unaware, this torpor, this languor, this miserable searching for a God you cannot find—a God who has heretofore been yours, who heretofore has heard your prayers, who never heretofore has failed you. "I beseech you let not this cause you to despair. He hath said, and shall He not perform?' 'Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.' "In the meantime, it has pleased Him to turn away for a little his health-giving face. There is some purpose, believe me, in the grief, the stupor, that is yours. We cannot follow Him into the distance where his everlasting purposes are planned: we cannot, being finite, comprehend Infinity. "But the faith that enlarges man's heart, and gives grandeur to his intellect, and nobility to his toil,-that faith which points to God as in all as well as over all, will carry you through even this prayerless, faithless season. The sickness is not unto death. The Master is not yet come into the house to heal: maybe, had thy faith been stronger, He had not waited, but had spoken words of healing from afar off. Now to wait for his touch, believing, is all that thou canst do. 'It is expedient that He has gone from thee, for a little while.' Only a little while. He cannot leave thee." "The Master saith, 'Where is the guestchamber that I may enter in?' "Even so come, Lord Jesus!' MARGARET turned out of the church with a heart softened and thankful, if not greatly comforted. But the very softening comforted: it was a comfort to feel hot tears coursing themselves over her face beneath her veil. The sermon was too long to give in full, and neither can it here be done justice to, nor may it to others be acceptable as it was to Margaret. The preacher spoke, and it seemed he spoke specially to her of rest and patience; and as he spoke they seemed in measure to come back to her after a weary absence. "I hope the dove will find a resting-place," said Margaret, "and not take fright at the confusion in my heart." Ellen hung behind a moment to speak to some one she knew. When she rejoined Margaret she said: "I have seen the clergyman, Margaret; he passed me quite close. I wonder who he is!" "Then he is not the rector ?" "O no; the one who read is the rector. This is some stranger; but he must be very kind, he was talking to a blind man in the churchyard." They walked on in silence for some time, making no comment on the sermon. Margaret felt that Ellen would not look upon it in the same light, and Ellen was evidently in no way impressed by it. "If I could have a clergyman like that to talk to at Fernhill," thought Margaret, "I should be different from what I am now. He does not preach cold doctrine to repel us; and he would, from his own greatness, take pity upon sins, and failings, and weaknesses in others." "If I were quite sure that Ann is not cooking those lamb-cutlets for dinner," thought Ellen, "we need not walk so fast. I want to keep them for to-morrow, and to have that half pigeon-pie to-day." So was each in her way engrossed in meditation, till Margaret felt herself being stared at by Ellen's grey eyes. "What is it, Ellen ?" she asked. "I was thinking how beautiful you look in mourning, Margaret; but you always look beautiful in anything." declared her intention of going home, and reduced the party, a further constraint seemed to fall upon the remaining two. Margaret walked rapidly, holding her head high, and compressing her lips, as was her habit when she was annoyed. Luke walked beside her, mostly in silence, now and then venturing a humble remark, or some thought for her welfare. "You have got a headache, I am afraid?" he asked once. "Not much more than usual, thank you," said Margaret. Then a long silence. He looked into the hedge and then shyly at Margaret; she looked up to the trees and the sky. "I hope Mrs. Armytage is quite well?" said Margaret. "Very well, thank you. I wish I could see you look as well." The voice here took a pathetic tone, and the large blue eyes grew plaintive. If she had been lighter-hearted, Margaret would have been more cutting in her retorts. As it was, she could only be cold and distant. She was angry that Luke Carew had dared to come and see her. She could not doubt for what purpose he had come. In her comparative prosperity she had rejected him; did he think that poverty would drive her to his arms? I cannot analyse a woman's feelings under these or any other circumstances; but certain it is, that to some minds, or in some phases of mind, devotion, and particularly displayed devotion, defeat their own purpose, and are more repulsive than acceptable. The abject misery and humiliation they see, jars perhaps with woman's pre-conceived notions of manliness and manly wooing. The wounds they have themselves inflicted (perhaps to prove the metal of their victim), received in a spirit of patience and forbearance, or with ill-disguised pain, aggravate rather than soften or humanise. It is such a delicate question, and woman is so versatile and wondrous a creation, that no one can attempt to make a rule for her-shall I say subjection? But I fancy if man were more often, and at the right moment, to "frown and be perverse, and say them nay," like Juliet, to take a leaf indeed from their own journal, he would more often be successful. Perhaps, some may say, this is not desirable. Luke Carew, however, was not of this mind. There is a moment after all the tyranny, which I will allow it is, and the pleasures of that tyranny which I will allow exist, when woman sinks down exhausted by the use of her own weapons, and uses her power to |