ills of our own commonplace lives: the cruel wrong of another's sin, the
long, wasting pain, the empty cradle, the broken heart. How can we look
on these things and yet believe that Eternal Love is on the throne?

Except we believe in Jesus we cannot; if we do, we must. For remember,
Jesus was no shallow optimist; He did not go through life seeing only
its pleasant things; He was at Cana of Galilee, but He was also at Nain;
over all His life there lay a shadow, the shadow of the Cross; He died
in the dark, betrayed of man, forsaken of God; surely He hath borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows. And yet through all, His faith in God
never wavered. He prayed, and He taught others to pray. When He lifted
His eyes towards heaven, it was with the word "Father" upon His lips;
and in like manner He bade His disciples, "When ye pray, say 'Father.'"
He took the trembling hands of men within His own, and looking into
their eyes, filled as they were with a thousand nameless fears, "Fear
not," He said, "our heavenly Father knoweth; let not your heart be
troubled, neither let it be afraid."

"Learn of Me ... and ye shall find rest unto your souls;" herein is the
secret of peace. But it is not enough that we give ear to the words of
Christ; we must make our own the whole meaning of the fact of Christ.
"God's in His heaven," sings Browning; "all's right with the world." But
if God is only in His heaven, all is _not_ right with the world. In
Christ we learn that God has come from out His heaven to earth; and in
the Cross of Christ we find the eternal love which meets and answers all
our fears. Fear not,

"Or if you fear,
Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds."

"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

* * * * *

CONCERNING MONEY

"Now I saw in my dream, that at the further side of that plain
was a little hill called Lucre, and in that hill a
silver-mine, which some of them that had formerly gone that
way, because of the rarity of it, had turned aside to see; but
going too near the brink of the pit, the ground being
deceitful under them, broke, and they were slain;-some also
had been maimed there, and could not to their dying day be
their own men again."--JOHN BUNYAN.

* * * * *

XIII

CONCERNING MONEY

_"How hardly shall they that have riches enter int