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helpful, and if so, they will only render the sincere milk of the Word more prized than before. They will lead the soul more habitually to that exhaustless storehouse of all consolation, and thus soothe and strengthen, even amid the troubles which crowd upon men like waves upon an angry sea.-This is one infallible test of all right teaching-Does it send me more frequently to the Bible, and make me love and prize it more and more?

Yet let there be no mistake.

Neither

the word of God nor his providence can avail without His Spirit, either to enlighten or to soothe us. "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."

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Sorrow, and its Design.

"God is love." 1 John iv. 8.

CAN this be true?-asks some one who has long been stretched upon a bed of languishing, but who does not yet understand the purposes of God in the woes which he sends. Is God love, when wearisome days and sleepless nights, and sorrows which threaten to be lifelong, are my only lot?

Can God be love?-asks another, who is left alone in this cold inhospitable world. He can look back,

perhaps, upon the time when his home was one of happiness,—when

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the olive branches

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But

grew in beauty round his table, and when life was all in sunshine. a dreary solitude has now succeeded to that. He is alone in the world, and having only nature to guide him, he asks, Can God be love? He would almost say, Why hast Thou made me thus?

And a third asks-Can God be love, when widowhood is now my lot; when he has taken away the delight of my eyes with a stroke,— and left me to struggle against hardships without either a hand to help or a heart to sympathise with me?

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