A holy presence fills that quiet air; a voice of love, and grace, and mercy steals into that long bereaved and mourning heart; he throws himself down on the dewy grass, and its blades bend beneath heavier and warmer drops than the soft tears of morn and even. Listen! for his voice breaks through the stillness with a tone of unspeakable joy, thrilling in its accents, and its words are “all things;” hark how the wind echoes them among the trees, as though so worthy of diffusion, so full of hopeful confidence, that even it loved to linger on and prolong the sound. “All things are possible--with God.” His trembling form is bent in the hallowed stillness of unuttered prayer; his frame quivers with an emotion for years unfelt. Oh! how different from all his past shakings and tremblings, how different from all that has gone before is this! But who dare lift the veil which covers the deep humility of that supplicating spirit, or break in upon the holy confidence with which it approaches, in this its first communion, its God and Father. It is enough that there is joy in heaven, this blessed morning, over the returned prodigal, the lost and wandering child, “he that was dead is alive again, he that was lost is found,” and Halbert Melville at length is at rest. Long and fearfully has he struggled since that fearful night in hoary Edinburgh; been tossed in Atlantic storms, seen the wonders of the Lord on the great deep, in the thunder, and the lightning, and the tempest, and experienced His goodness in being brought to land in safety once again. For years since then, on every wall, his tearless eyes have seen, as though written by an unseen hand, those terrible words, “It is impossible,” and a voice heard by no mortal but himself, has rung again and again in sad reiteration into his despairing ears, “It is impossible,” like an “anathema maranatha,” ever binding and irreversible. But to-day the whole has changed, the cloud has been dissipated and the sun shines forth once more; another voice sweeter than that harp of sweetest sound has brought to him joy for mourning, and blotted out from his mental horizon his fancied doom, with that one word of gracious omnipotence, “All things are possible with God.” It has told him of the might that can save to the uttermost, of the grace that casts away no contrite heart, and of the love to sinners which passeth all knowledge; and in the day of recovered hope, and in faith which has already the highest seal, the spirit’s testimony ennobling its meek humility, Halbert Melville arises from beneath these witness trees, from that altar in a cathedral of Nature’s own fashioning for its Maker’s worship, more grand and noble than the highest conception of man could conceive or his highest art embellish, with a change wrought upon his enfranchised spirit, which makes him truly blessed. In his despair and hopelessness he had pronounced this “impossible,” and he stands now