I have seen what has seemed to me a sweet and touching answer to this question. Over the desolate sands a quiet Mist has been drawn, while the Sea moaned far away down at low tide. And I seemed thus taught how even earth’s wrecks may be repaired, and earth’s ruin turned into gain. Better to give to God the fresh sparkle and the first eager and joyous onset of life. But if not, and if the waves must set towards some earth shore, until they are broken, sullied, and wrecked there, see what the rising mist teaches. Let them remember themselves, and at last come homeward, leaving the stain and the defilement behind. So merciful is God, that even these ruins and disappointments are all messages of His patient love to us. If we will not turn at first to Him, He will let us break our hearts upon the shore of earth, content if but at last our hopes and aspirations will rise in a pure repentant mist from their overthrow and ruin, and wait beside the gate of heaven, touched now with the clear moonlight of peace, and expecting the rich sunburst of glory hereafter. The very overthrows and dissatisfactions of earth may thus rise, spiritualised and purified, to God at last. This, no doubt, is the intention of the disappointments and inadequacies of this earth, upon which the heart, at the time of the coming in of the tide, spends so much of its powers, and against which it bursts and dies down into wild cries and weary sighings. This is the intention--an intention, alas! too often unfulfilled. For if God is saying, “Turn, my children, from that careless dwelling upon earth’s pursuits, excitements, and enterprises, to heavenly aspirations, letting your heart and mind, like rising mist from broken waves, ascend, instead of dwelling in tears on the bare sands that were never worth the winning--ascend thither, whither He who loved you is gone before, and continually dwell with Him, in the place called Fair Havens, where the waves of this troublesome world have ceased their restless eager quest, and are lulled into a peace beyond all understanding”--if God thus invites us, even by that sigh of our broken retiring waves, there is another voice, commonly heard, and too often heeded--a voice counselling hardness, repining, rebellion: a moan of sullenness, of despair, of defiance--a voice that whispers, “Curse God and die,” rather than, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” The voice, oh let us be assured, of folly, not of wisdom; of our Enemy, and not of a friend. [Illustration]