Are there any whose eyes trace these pages who have ever undergone such a season? or it may be are undergoing it now? I stop not to inquire as to the cause;--indulged sin, omitted or carelessly performed duty, neglect of prayer, worldly conformity.[15] Are you feelingly alive, painfully conscious that your love, like that of many, has waxed cold;--are you mourning that you have not the nearness to the Mercy-seat that once you enjoyed,--not the love of your Bibles, and ordinances, and sacraments that you once had,--that a heavy cloud mantles your spiritual horizon,--God's countenance, not what once it was, irradiated with a Father's smiles,--nor heaven what once it seemed, a second home? [15] "In the time of need He hides Himself often, and seems to have forgotten me. Tears have thus been my meat, because of their saying unto my soul, 'Where is now thy God?' But I am bound by all the experienced freeness and riches of the Redeemer's grace to say, that when He hides Himself from me, it is not because He has forgotten _me_, but because I have been forgetting Him."--_Hewitson._ "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, not comforted!" do not despond. In these very sighings and moanings of your downcast spirit, there are elements for hope and comfort, not for despair. They are the evidences and indications that the spark, though feeble, is not quenched--that the pulse, though languid, still beats--that faith, though like a grain of mustard-seed, is still germinating. "O thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?" It is that very _shadow_ that has now come athwart your soul, and which you so bitterly mourn, which tells of _sunshine_. As it is the shadow which enables us to read the hours on the dial, so is it in the spiritual life. It is because of these shadows on the soul's dial-face that we can infer the shining of a better Sun. "The wicked have no bands in _their_ (spiritual) death." Their life has been nothing but shadow; they cannot therefore mourn the loss of a sunshine they never felt or enjoyed. Well has it been said, "When the refreshing dews of grace seem to be withheld, and we are ready to say, 'Our hope is lost, God hath forgotten to be gracious'--this is that furnace in which one that is not a child of God never was placed. For Satan takes good care not to disquiet his children. He has no fire for their souls on this side everlasting burnings; his fatal teaching ever is, Peace, peace!"[16] But what, desponding one, is, or ought to be, thy resort? Go! exile in spirit--go, like that royal mourner amid the oak-thickets of Gilead! Brood no more in unavailing sorrow and with burning tears. Thou mayest, like him, have much to depress thy spirit. Black and crimson sins may have left their indelible stain on the page of memory. In aching heart-throbs, thou mayest be heaving forth the bitter confession, "_Mine_ iniquities have separated between me and my God." But go like him! take down thy silent harp. Its strings may be