There is something in these words which charity requires us to excuse. If, under the peculiar circumstances in which she was at present placed, the name of NAOMI, which signifies _pleasant_, distracted her, and she wished rather to adopt that of Mara, importing _bitterness_, her impatience must not be interpreted in the worst sense. After long absence, it is natural to anticipate a return home, and a rush of joy pervades even unfeeling minds, when the spire of their native _village_, the smoke of their native _hamlet_, especially the roof of their native _cottage_, first strikes upon the sight. Friends, family, neighbours, early scenes and pleasures, recur with a force which gives the air of enchantment to the long-lost scene. But every feeling of this nature was, in the case of Naomi, checked by different associations; the darkness of the sepulchre converted this day into midnight, and this lovely spot into a desolate wilderness! There is, moreover, something in Naomi's remonstrance, which sympathy would lead as to pity, and experience, in some degree, to blame. She commits an evident mistake in attributing the dispensations she had suffered, to a _testimony against her_ on the part of the supreme Disposer. Viewing past events through the discolouring medium of present affliction, and incapable of perceiving their secret and concurrent design, she forms a conclusion, which is rather the effect of temporary depression of mind, than of a settled conviction of judgment. We cannot doubt, indeed that the impression was evanescent; but it seems allied to that of the impatient patriarch, who exclaimed, "All these things are against me." _That_ eminent servant of God enjoyed the privilege of living to a period in which the divine purposes were fully developed, and of seeing that what he deemed hostile circumstances, were really conducive to the most wise and felicitous results. Had Jacob departed during the interval, and while the mysterious plan was yet unaccomplished, his grey hairs would have gone down with sorrow to the grave, and the cloud of mystery would have been suspended over his dying hour. Such is the usual lot of the righteous. Life, in general, does not afford a space sufficiently ample, a period sufficiently protracted, for the complete execution of the great purposes of Infinite Goodness with regard to our real interests; and we murmur, because we cannot penetrate his arrangements. Patience, however, should be supported by the consideration that either in this, or in a future state of existence, the day of satisfactory explanation will arrive.