Well, my brother! when such moments come to us, and they come to us all sooner or later--and I was going to add a parenthesis, which you will think strange, and say that they come to us all sooner or later, blessed be God!--when such moments come to us, do not let the black mass hide the light one from you, but copy this Psalmist, and in the energy of your faith, even though it be the extremity of your pain, grasp and grip them both; and though you have to say and to wail: 'Innumerable evils have compassed me about,' be sure that you do not let that prevent you from saying, 'Many, O Lord my God! are Thy wonderful works which are to us-ward. They are more than can be numbered.' I do not enter upon this as a mere matter of philosophical speculation. It is far too serious and important a matter to be so dealt with, in a pulpit at any rate, but I would also add in one sentence that the mere thinker, who looks at the question solely from an intellectual point of view, has need to take the lesson of my two texts, and to be sure that he keeps clear before him both halves of the facts--though they seem to be as unlike each other as the eclipsed and the uneclipsed silver half of the moon--with which he has to deal. Remember, the one does not contradict the other; but let us ask ourselves if the one does not _explain_ the other. If it be that these mercies are so innumerable as my first text says, may it not be that they go deep down beneath, and include in their number, the experience that seems most opposite to them, even the sorrow that afflicts our lives? Must it not be, that the innumerable sum of God's mercies has not to have subtracted from it, but has to have added to it, the sum which also at intervals appears to us innumerable, of our sorrows and our burdens? Perhaps the explanation does not go to the bottom of the bottomless, but it goes a long way down towards it. 'Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth' makes a bridge across the gulf which seems to part the opposing cliffs, these two sets effect, and turn the darker into a form in which the brighter reveals itself. 'All things work together for good.' And God's innumerable mercies include the whole sum total of my sorrows. II. So, again, notice how the blending of these two thoughts together heightens the impression of each. All artists, and all other people know the power of contrast. White never looks so white as when it is relieved against black; black never so intense as when it is relieved against white. A white flower in the twilight gleams out in spectral distinctness, paler and fairer than it looked in the blazing sunshine. So, if we take and put these two things together--the dark mass of man's miseries and the radiant brightness of God's mercies, each heightens the colour of the other.