What a wonderful chapter is the twenty-third of Job! There are many things in that book which touch upon our modern experience. "Oh! that I knew where I might find him, that I might come near even to his seat. I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him; on the left hand where he cloth work, but I cannot behold him; for he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him." But I come with undoubting faith to Job's conclusion: "But he knoweth the way that I take; when he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold." There are deep trials, at times, in the approach to God, in lifting the weak thoughts of our minds to the [328] Infinite One; there are struggles and tears which none may ever witness; but still I say, "0 God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee,"--ever will I seek thee. Let him who will, or must, walk out from this fair, bright, glowing world, thrilling all the world in us with joy, upon the cold and dreary waste of atheism; I will not. I should turn rebel to all the great instincts within me, and all the great behests of nature and life around me, if I did. Ah! the confounding, ever-troubling difficulty is not to believe, but to feel the great Presence all the day long. This is what I think of, and long have, with questioning and pain. What beings should we become--what to one another--under that living and loving sense of the all-good, the all-beautiful and divine within us and around us! And, for ourselves, what a perfect joy it is to feel that, in this seemingly disturbed universe, all is order, all is right, all is well, all is the best possible! Yours ever, ORVILLE DEWEY. From a Note-Book. THE pain of erring,--the bitterest in the world,--is it not strange that it should be so bitter? Is it not strange that growth must be attained on such hard terms? Nay, but is it not simply applying the sharpest instrument to the cutting and carving of the finest and grandest form of things on earth,--a noble character?