Then, knowing from whom it proceeds--to mention the second consideration,--you will be wonderfully sustained. To illustrate, a story from my holiday reading: A little girl sent on an errand had to cross a wide but shallow stream, but there were firm and tried stepping-stones all the way over. "Oh! I'm afraid," said the child to a lady who was passing. "Why are you afraid, there are stones all the way over. See how easily I can cross it." Very timidly the little girl began to cross. "Just one step at a time is all you have to take," said the kind guide. So one step followed another--the first few were the hardest to take,--and soon she was safe on the other shore, smiling at her fears. "It is not so hard after all," she remarked, "just one step at a time brought us over." Beloved, when troubles come,--they are sure to, in this year also,--do not look so much at the waters before you, but at the stepping-stones the Father has placed for your feet. Here is a strong, firm stepping-stone that has often sustained me: "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Here is another: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Have a few such stepping-stones, select one in particular for this year. This, perhaps, will do, small, but weighty, "Our Father." Amen. EPIPHANY SUNDAY. I am the Light of the world.--_John 8, 12._ Underneath Rome, the ancient capital of the world, and extending for miles and miles between the River Tiber and the Mediterranean Sea, are those mysterious passages called the catacombs. How far they go, whither they lead, at what exact point they terminate, no living man can tell. From the examinations of the learned who have explored them for some little distance, at some few points, we know that they are long and narrow quarries in the rock; underground roads mined out of the soft volcanic tufa, or stone, on both sides of which the early Christians, who would not burn, but insisted on burying their dead, would deposit their departed, and where during these fierce persecutions they would also assemble for worship. These passages are but high enough to walk upright through them; they are so narrow in width that you can touch the sides on either hand, as you grope along, and they are unutterably silent and dark. If you strain your eye forward, you see nothing beyond the few feet which the feeble torch or flickering candle illumines; if you look up, the rock is there; if you gaze to the right or to the left, you see the shallow niches, like shelves, one over another, where are strewn the bones of the dead, crumbling into dust and ashes; and gazing behind you, you feel a choking sensation at the heart, that if your light should go out, or your guide should forsake you, you would never find your way back,--as it is a well-known fact that many too curious in their researches have disappeared. Such, then, are the catacombs, a subterranean home of death, a place of impenetrable darkness. And,