ind which rends the mountains. We have become so accustomed to
associate the startling and spectacular with the Divine, that we fail
to discover God, when the heaven is begemmed with stars, and the earth
carpeted with flowers: as though the lightning were more to us than
starlight, and the destructive than the peaceful and patient
constructive forces, which are ever at work building up and repairing
the fabric of the universe.

Do not look back on the Incarnation, or forward to the Second Advent,
as though there were more of God in either one or the other than is
within our reach. God is; God is here; God is indivisible: all of God
is present at any given point of time or place. He may choose to
manifest Himself in outward signs, which impress the imagination more
at one time than another; the faith of the Church maybe quicker to
apprehend and receive in one century than the next: but all time is
great--every age is equally his workmanship, and equally full of his
wonder-working power. Alas for us, that our eyes are holden!

_Let us not disparage the ordinary and commonplace_. We are all taught
to run after the startling and extraordinary--the statesman who
accomplishes the _coup d'etat_; the painter who covers a large canvas
with a view to scenic effects; the preacher who indulges in superficial
and showy rhetoric, the musician whose execution is brilliant and
astonishing. We like miracles! Whatever appeals to our love for the
sensational and unexpected is likely enough to displace our
appreciation of the simple and ordinary. When the sun is eclipsed, we
all look heavenward; but the golden summer days may be filled with
sunlight, which is dismissed with a commonplace remark about the
weather. A whole city will turn out to see the illuminations, whilst
the stars hardly attract a passing notice. Let there be a show of
curiously-shaped orchids, and society is stirred; but who will travel
far to see a woodland glade blue with wild hyacinths, or a meadow-lawn
besprent with daisies. Thus our tastes are vitiated and blinded.

It is good to cultivate simple tastes. The pure and childlike heart
will find unspeakable enjoyment in all that God has made, though it be
as familiar as a lawn sparkling with dewdrops, a hay-field scented by
clover-blooms, a streamlet murmuring over the pebbles, or the drawl of
the shingle after a retreating wave. It is a symptom of a weak and
unstable nature to be always in search for so