with trembling step, his soul never swept with the gales of Divine Love. But in another world, if not in this, the inner man must come forth and meet its own dismal retributions. These artificial motives cease to act, our sham-work falls away from us, and the natural heart appears just as it is, and fills its sphere of life with its own hideous shapings and colorings. And yet many a timid believer has been driven into some grim-looking "ark of safety," to escape from the fire-storms which were expected to come down upon all who remained outside. They are safe from the storms without, but not from the pent-up magazines within. That religion is the most safe, and that discipline the most merciful, which explores the heart most thoroughly, and pours the noontide into its chambers.
Have you, reader, ever experienced a great sorrow? and if so, have you not seen afterwards how it discloses heights and depths in your spiritual nature which you had never known, and resources upon which you had never drawn; how it produces susceptibilities which you had never before felt; how it induces a tenderness of mind that makes it ductile almost as the clay, and ready to receive the stamp of the Divine image; how little animosities and hatreds are banished and forgotten, while the heart has new yearnings towards all that live, and especially towards all that suffer; how the soul sickens at mere shows and appearances, and demands realities, while it hungers after the good and the true; how this world recedes and grows less,
