y, "there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth"? But, alas! those tears can be
dried--_never_. But here Love can have its own way, and mourning ones
may learn a secret that shall surely gild their tears with a rainbow
glory of light, and the oppressed and distressed, the persecuted and
afflicted, may triumphantly sing, "Who shall separate us from the love
of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are
_more than conquerors_, through Him that loved us." Ah, is there not,
too, a peculiar beauty in those words "more than conquerors"? What can
be more than a conqueror? A ship driven out of its course by the
tempest, with anchor dragging or cable parted, is no "conqueror" at
all, but the reverse. That ship riding out the gale, holding fast to
its anchorage, is truly a conqueror; but that is all. But the vessel
being driven by the very tempest to the haven where it would be, is
better off still, and thus "more than conqueror." So it is with the
saint now; the tempest drives him the closer to Him who is indeed his
desired haven, and thus he is more than conqueror. Is not, then, this
earth a unique place?--this life a wonderful time? A few years
(possibly a few hours) more, and we shall be out of the scene of sorrow
and evil forever; nor can we then prove the power of the love of Christ
to lift above the sorrow either ourselves or others. O my soul, art
thou redeeming the time--"ransoming from loss" (as it might literally
be worded) the precious opportunities that are around thee on every
side, "because the days are evil"? The very fact that the days are
evil--that thou art in the place of tears--gives thee the
"opportunities." When the days cease to be evil, those special
opportunities, whatever may be the service of the redeemed, will be
gone forever.

But the Preacher still continues his search "under the sun," and turns
from oppression and tears to regard what is, on the surface at least, a
comparatively happy lot--"right work," by which a man has attained to
prosperity and pre-eminence. But as he looks closer at a case which,
at first sight, seems to promise real satisfaction, he sees that there
is a bitter sting connected with it,--a sting that at once robs it of
all its attraction, and makes void all its promise of true rest,--for
"for this a man is envied of his neighbor." His success is only cause
of bitter jeal