Thus, in one sense, every man must stand alone, and yet the Christian man knows that he is a child of God, and that his Father will never forsake him. Every one of us must _labour alone_ in the great workshop of the world. Each of us has his corner where God has placed him to weave in his little bit of the pattern of this world's history, to add his little portion of colour to the picture called Life. For each of us there is the day's work, wherein we can labour, or idle, as we choose, and for each there comes the night when no man can work. And what we have to do we must do _alone_. The majority of men who live the life of duty do so unnoticed and uncared for. They are like those stars which our eyes never see, but they shine all the same. Such men work and suffer, and wait till their time comes to join "The crowd untold of men, By the cause they served unknown, Who moulder in myriad graves of old, Never a story, never a stone." But such men have the comfort of knowing that they have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain; they have lived unto God in this world, and if solitary, they have been alone with God. Again, _we must all suffer alone_. However kind and sympathetic our friends may be, they cannot enter into our pains and agonies. They can be sorry for us, but they cannot feel as we feel. When the body is racked by severe pangs of suffering, even the presence of friends is too much for us. We want to be alone, _alone with God_. And this is specially true of the sorrows of the mind. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." No one, not even our nearest and dearest, can go with us to the Gethsemane, where we suffer, or the Calvary, where we endure our cross. But it is in these hours of bitterest suffering that the Christian feels that he is not forsaken. He remembers that his Master, Jesus, trod the winepress of sorrow alone, and that of the people there was none with Him. He knows that he is permitted to walk the same lonely path as Jesus trod before him. He knows that as he kneels in the darkened room with his solitary sorrow, with his breaking heart, with his sinful soul bowed down in penitence, that Jesus is with him--he is alone with God. And again, _we must all die alone_. The moment of death is the most solitary of all our life. The Prince, with his armies, and crowds of friends and courtiers, is, at his death, as much alone as the beggar who drops and dies by the roadside. Loving hands may clasp ours fondly, but we must let them go. Husband, mother, wife, or child may cling to us in close embrace, but they cannot detain us, or go with us, we must die alone. And yet in that most solitary moment the Christian who is dead unto sin, and living unto God, knows that he is not alone. He knows that when he has heard the sound of the last voice on earth, he shall hearken to other voices, never listened to before. When the last farewell is spoken, and the last hand clasped on earth, there will