THE GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1863. THE DAY OF ADVERSITY. ENGLISH people are very often com-covered with purple heather mingling plaining of the fickleness of their in rich abundance with myriads of climate. There is so much un- feathery ferns,) and at a distance certainty about it, say they, that you are never sure what weather may turn up. A garish morn may herald a drenching day, and a dawn dark with clouds may precede a sunny noon. Your business demands that you should be out in the fields; but before your plans can be executed, the face of the sky changes, and your arrangements are upset. Or, your love of nature tempts you out for a ramble to some favourite hill; and before you have had time to inhale the sweet upper air, or to dwell with a lover's eye on the beauties of the landscape, you are driven to seek the nearest shelter from the pitiless pelting of the storm. One such episode as the last the writer will not soon forget. The cloudless sky and bright clear air drew him out to gaze for the hundredth time on the uplifted landscape visible from a well-known hill in the centre of England. The top was reached, and there, sure enough, was the splendid panorama, for a favourable sight of which he had willingly toiled. To the right of the hill, (whose eastern sides were now VOL. IV.-NEW SERIES, No. 1. of a few miles, was an irregular a larger one now visible on of the fading character of worldly properity. In the heyday of the very edge of the northern horizon. Presently the sky grew dark with clouds. The wind moaned in the trees, and down came a heavy shower that drove him to seek refuge in the small coppice of fragrant pines a little below the hill top. The shower was long and heavy; and when a second time the hill was mounted, the whole landscape had vanished. A thick white mist had crept up from the heated ground, now soaked with rain, and had spread itself over the whole plain below. Homesteads, villages, fields, hedgerows, all were invisible. A few trees taller than their fellows peered above the rising banks of cloud, and the irregular shaped wooded hill to the right looked like a green island floating in a sea of milk. In the varying moods of nature which such scenes reveal, have we not a living and perpetual parable? Is there not in this alternation a picture of human life, with its flashes of broad sunshine, and its darkness of obliterating cloud? Have we not here something akin to their history whose present sufferings have so deeply touched the Christian hearts of England? Time was when their homes laughed with plenty, and their hearts throbbed with praise; when mills whirled in busy life the livelong day, and flashed out through the winter's darkness the fire-flame of a thousand burning eyes. But alas! those mills are dark and silent now. Hearts are sad. Homes are dreary. And but for the generous aid of a nation that weeps with those that weep, grim famine and pestilence would stand twin sentinels at their doors. In the day of prosperity, be joyful, says the wise man; but in the day of adversity, consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that men should find nothing after him. The day of adversity suggests many appropriate subjects for meditation. And, first and most obviously, we are reminded success men do not think of reverses. The spectral Banquo of a gloomy future rarely disturbs their feast. And even when the thought of possible adversity obtrudes, it finds a heart indisposed for its reception. The present is more suasive than the future. The material, palpable gains of to-day are real, but the probable losses of tomorrow are shadowy and unsubstantial. When, however, the rich become poor, and the poor are clamouring for bread-the lesson pushes itself under our notice, and will not be put off. It is no longer an Oriental figure that riches are swift-winged and fly away. It is a plain, stern, visible, present, crushing, disheartening fact; especially to those who have served only Mammon. Have we not also suggested the necessity for a life fixed upon the real and permanent, and not upon the seeming only, and the fleeting? Is there not such a life? Does not the Best of Books describe it, invite into it, and with winning love and noble example? A life of faith is neither unknown nor untried. To walk by faith is to walk with heroes. Men have found their strength in it, and women their sublimation, For this living with strong reliance on the unseen, instead of paralyzing our capacity for the world's work, shows how best it may be done, gives a grandeur to the life of every saint, and lifts the poorest out of the dull routine of commonplace to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. With Him all is real and permanent. Riches may melt away. Prosperity may cease. But His love still remains an exhaustless spring. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shail not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. Solomon tells us that these alternations of prosperity and adversity are, by Divine Providence, set over against one another. They |