Yet they might have read in Scripture, in the very words of holy men of God, that “the ear of the Lord listeneth to the song of the reaper, and the joy of harvest; and that he delights not to turn the dance of the vintage into mourning, nor to make the young cease from their music:” but because the good provisions of God are daily abused by the many, who consider not the gracious Giver of them, therefore they would have the bread of all steeped in tears, and eaten with the bitter herbs of mourning. Of a truth, in some degree every Christian man, and minister more especially, must be a mourner, and is: but the spirit would fail and faint if it might not also taste the rich consolations of a hallowed joy; and if, amid the labours, the toils, and the mean cares of the daily pilgrimage, man might not stoop to gather the flower at his feet, or pause to listen to the feathered choristers of God’s own temple, it would be to refuse and put away, with a sullen unthankfulness, the comforts which the Father of mercies has provided. Of such enjoyments Noble was most fearlessly fond. To him the world of nature was a vast and richly illuminated volume; on the various pictures of which he could pore for ever, with all the wonder, and with all the rapture, of childhood:--“his Father made them all”--that was his feeling. The arrows of trouble and disappointment fell blunted from a bosom, the shield of which was a God seen, acknowledged, and felt, in all things visible, as the very essence of love. CHAP. XI. He makes the infirmity of his temper pass for revelations. BUTLER.