It is well we should remember, in the first place, that, even though to ourselves this hour is peculiarly dark, it is but an aggravation, and we may hope a comparatively brief one, of human experience throughout all history. That history has been from the first marked by two aspects, in the sharpest contrast to one another. In the first place, from century to century it has been one of incessant struggle, of war, of the rising of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and the Book of Revelation depicts the world as ending in scenes of greater struggle and desolation than have ever gone before. That has been the terrible reality of human experience from the commencement to the present time. But, on the other hand, throughout these distressing scenes there has always been heard a moral and spiritual Voice, assuring men that God was controlling all these sufferings and struggles, and that all was working for good, alike to the world at large and to the individual. You have the representation of the experience of every generation of men in the pages of the Bible, and especially of the Prophet Isaiah. He is known as the Evangelical Prophet, because he depicts in deeper and nobler tones than any other inspired voice that blessed promise of good will, of which the final proclamation was uttered to-day. But let us bear in mind the circumstances under which the glorious promises which we recite and sing at this season were uttered. Let us listen to Isaiah’s own description of them in the twenty-fourth chapter: “Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.... The land shall be utterly emptied and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word.... All joy is darkened; the mirth of the land is gone. In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.” These were the visible realities around him, but he is inspired to look over them and through them; and he ends that passage by declaring that “it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth;” and that, at the last, “the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously.” Isaiah and his fellow-Prophets were surrounded by scenes of war and bloodshed and desolation as terrible as any we have around us in our own day, and it was over these fields of battle and destruction that the glorious songs were heard which are our delight and encouragement at this season. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received at the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” There is nothing more amazing