It is often said by those who look on the dark side of Divine dispensations, that troubles always come in clusters, and one deep sorrow soon gives place to another. This may be true, but not in the sense which these croakers of misery would intimate. As happiness and unhappiness are often but relative terms in our changing world, it needs but the wise Director of events so to time the dispensations of his Providence, that one evil may counteract another, or to hold up before us the certainty that we and every interest near our heart are at his disposal, to bring us quietly to acquiesce in his will; and in that submission there is peace. George Rutherford, as he rode towards his home, amid the solitude of midnight, pondering over his ruined fortunes, felt that he was suffering the severest stroke which could have come upon him; but when he came in sight of the spot where that home had been, when he looked upon the terrible flames, and felt the dread uncertainty which hung over the fate of those dear ones of his heart, he then felt that God, his Sovereign and his Father, had at his command profounder depths of sorrow in which his soul might agonize. The loss of fortune was but a mere sip of the bitter cup, a mere mist from the dark and waste wilderness of mortal suffering; and when he folded his dear wife and children in his arms, he felt, as he said, 'Let poverty come, we will not fear it.' But he had yet to learn the full meaning which that word conveys. Little could he tell, born as he had been to affluence, the anguish which would at times wring his spirit; his resources drained, his home destroyed, the little comforts to which his family had been accustomed, the gratification of their finer tastes, the elegancies of life--all cut off; it was well for him that he could not know at once the full extent of that change which had passed upon his fortunes.