r. He is frightful in appearance, and carries his spears and
shield. The woman is alarmed and rushes into the house and closes the
door. He comes and knocks at the door, and she is in terror. She sends her
servant, who comes back and says, "The man says he must see you." She
goes, all affrighted. He takes out an old newspaper. He has come a month's
journey on foot from her husband, and inside the dirty newspaper is a
letter from her husband, telling her of his welfare. How that wife delights
in that letter! She forgets the face that has terrified her. And now as
weeks are passing away again, how she begins to long for that ugly Kafir
messenger! After long waiting he comes again, and this time she rushes
out to meet him because he is the messenger that comes from her beloved
husband, and she knows that with all his repelling exterior, he is
the bearer of a message of love. Beloved, have you learned to look at
tribulation, and vexation, and disappointment, as the dark, savage-looking
messenger with a spear in his hand, that comes straight from Jesus? Have
you learned to say, "There is never a trouble, and never a hurt by which
my heart is touched or even pierced, but it comes from Jesus, and brings
a message of love?" Will you not learn to say from to-day, "Welcome every
trial, for it comes from God?" If you want God to be all in all, you must
see and meet God in every providence. Oh, learn to accept God's will in
everything! Come learn to say of every trial, without exception, "It is my
Father who sent it. I accept it as His messenger," and nothing in earth or
hell can separate you from God.

If God is to be all in all in your heart and life, I say not only, Allow
Him to take His place, and accept all His will, but, thirdly, Trust in His
power. Dear friends, it is "God who _worketh to will and to do_ according
to His good pleasure." It is "the God of peace," according to another
passage, "who perfects you in every good thing to do His will, _working
in you_ what is well-pleasing in His sight." You complain of weakness, of
feebleness, of emptiness. Never mind; that is what you are made for--to be
an emptied vessel, in which God can put His fullness and His strength.
Do learn the lesson. I know it is not easy. Long after Paul had been an
apostle, the Lord Jesus had to come in a very special way to teach him to
say, "I do gladly glory in my infirmities." Paul was in danger of being
exalted, owing to the revelations from Heave