Finally, remember under whose dominion all the sorrows and changes of earth take place. Let your faith in Him be firm and clear. To Him address your grief;--to Him lift up your prayer. Of Him seek strength and consolation;--of Him ask that a holy influence may attend every experience. And while all the trials of life should quicken us to a loftier diligence, and inspire us with a keener sense of personal responsibility, surely when our hearts are sore and bleeding,--when our hopes lie prostrate, and we are faint and troubled, it is good to rise to the contemplation of the Infinite Controller,--to lean back upon the Almighty Goodness that upholds the universe; to realize that He does verily watch over us, and care for us; to feel that around and above all things else He moves the vast circle of his purpose, and carries within it all our joys and sorrows; and that this mysterious tale of human life-this tangled plot of our earthly being-is unfolded beneath His all-beholding eye, and by His omnipotent and paternal hand. THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF SORROW "A man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief" Is. Iii. 3. There is one great distinction between the productions of Heathen and of Christian art. While the first exhibits the perfection of physical form and of intellectual beauty, the latter expresses, also, the majesty of sorrow, the grandeur of endurance, the idea of triumph refined from agony. In all those shapes of old there is nothing like the glory of the martyr; the sublimity of patience and resignation; the dignity of the thorn-crowned Jesus. It is easy to account for this. In that heathen age the soul had received no higher inspiration. It was only after the advent of Christ that men realized the greatness of sorrow and endurance. It was not until the history of the Garden, the Judgment-Hall, and the Cross had been developed, that genius caught nobler conceptions of the beautiful. This fact is, therefore, a powerful witness to the prophecy in the text, and to the truth of Christianity. Christ's personality, as delineated in the Gospels, is not only demonstrated by a change of dynasties,--an entire new movement in the world,--a breaking up of the its ancient order; but the moral ideal which now leads human action,--which has wrought this enthusiasm, and propelled man thus strangely forward,--has entered the subjective realities of the soul,--breathed new inspiration upon it,--opened up to it a new conception; and, lo! The statue dilates with a diviner expression;--lo! The picture wears a more lustrous and spiritual beauty.