or the bolt strikes down the
brother by his side, _then_, indeed, he feels that God is drawing near;
he listens humbly for the inward voice that shall explain the meaning
and need of this discipline. When by some unforeseen occurrence the
whole of his earthly property is swept away,--he becomes a poor
man,--this event, in his eyes, assumes sufficient magnitude to have come
from God, and to have a design and meaning; but when smaller comforts
are removed, smaller losses are encountered, and the petty, every-day
vexations and annoyances of life press about him, he recognizes no God,
and hears no voice, and sees no design. Hence John Newton says, "Many
Christians, who bear the loss of a child, or the destruction of all
their property, with the most heroic Christian fortitude, are entirely
vanquished and overcome by the breaking of a dish, or the blunders of a
servant, and show so unchristian a spirit, that we cannot but wonder at
them."

So when the breath of slander, or the pressure of human injustice, comes
so heavily on a man as really to threaten loss of character, and
destruction of his temporal interests, he seems forced to recognize the
hand and voice of God, through the veil of human agencies, and in
time-honored words to say,--

"When men of spite against me join,
They are the _sword_; the hand is thine."

But the smaller injustice and fault-finding which meet every one more or
less in the daily intercourse of life, the overheard remark, the implied
censure, too petty, perhaps, to be even spoken of, these daily recurring
sources of disquietude and unhappiness are not referred to God's
providence, nor considered as a part of his probation and discipline.
Those thousand vexations which come upon us through the
unreasonableness, the carelessness, the various constitutional failings,
or ill-adaptedness of others to our peculiarities of character, form a
very large item of the disquietudes of life; and yet how very few look
beyond the human agent, and feel these are trials coming from God! Yet
it is true, in many cases, that these so called minor vexations form the
greater part, and in many cases the only discipline of _life_; and to
those that do not view them as ordered individually by God, and coming
upon them by specified design, "their affliction 'really' cometh of the
dust, and their trouble springs out of the ground;" it is sanctified and
relieved by no divine presence and aid, but borne alone and in