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ing, downright honesty is speedily distanced. One holds a court, the other sits in solitude. The proverb hardly expresses a truth for "the life that now is." Ahl wait a little. Hear the witness of Time. Intrigue and practicing can not always escape the light-and the light they can not bear. Men once bitten grow shy of traps. No body loves to be practiced upon. Wily natures always come at last to be distrusted. These little business and social treacheries invariably, in the long run, lose the operators their richest capital-confidence. And the tides ebb away; and now it is honesty's turn. It comes late, but it is final. There is nothing after it. Here is perfect trust-unsuspecting security. Here we find bottom, and stand firm. The proverb was altogether right. Principles have had their development, and each after its kind borne their fruit. Time has ripened and gathered it-apples of Sodom for the one, apples of gold, nay, golden-globed sweetness from the tree of life for the other.

This is the demonstration of principle that can not be set aside -the demonstration of Time.

Again, Time is the test of friendships. Where is the love that never grows cold, that outlives youth and bloom, that was founded on deeper and more vital attractions than those that pass away with life's roseate morning? Where are the hands that used to clasp ours? Have they warm and welcoming palms for us still? Where are the lips that smiled upon us once? Do they keep smiles or sternness for us now? We used to listen to such earnest and tender expressions of interest in our fortunes, delight in our society, regard for our persons, and appreciation of our characteristics. Are all those utterances silent now? How much of youthful and ardent friendship has survived those summer days? How many of our later associations have kept their first gushing promises in truth and faithfulness?

And yet we must not judge harshly. If there is any lesson which Time letters most legibly on all the pages of our story, it is, that our hard, reproachful judgments, our morbid protests that all is false, deceitful, and hollow, that truth and honor have forsaken the earth, that none can be trusted, that no heart is sincere, that real kindness and genuine good-will are not to be found among men, are extravagances that would be ridiculous if they were not so false and injurious. We have been deceived and betrayed, but we must not generalize from that instance. We have broken through the ice here and there, but there may be yet broad fields of it as firm as a marble floor. The very hearts that we pronounce alienated and estranged, may rather have become wearied than chilled. Dislocated from one side, the broken fibers of social affections must cling somewhere. Thrown upon other fellowships, the tendrils have caught and twined about fresh objects. Once they were all free to turn and choose as they listed, but they have

been pressed long since into new alliances, and have responded to the new appeals as once they responded to ours. But in this very fact they show that their nature is unchanged. To human love, if not to our personal memory, they still are true; yes, and bring back the old relations, and we, it may be, should not find them wanting. This is what Time teaches.

And then, again, Time tries his tests upon character. Sorrowfully, often, we are made to watch this process. All seems fair outwardly. We have unbounded confidence. We surrender our gravest trusts. We rest upon this tried and approved integrity. It becomes a standard-bearer in the most salient advances of Christianity. It wins a good report. It stands a pillar, straight, strong, and upright. Lay your weight there, build thereon; and we build, and feel secure for solid years. And, one day, there is a crash. It was only the shell of a pillar; either within it was all rottenness and hollowness, or a sudden and violent wrench twisted. it out of place, and down it came, fallen and broken. It is a mournful lesson Time has read us. Whom shall we trust? What shall we build with? Character that has stood seemingly all severer tests, passed unsullied amid youthful passions and summer temptations, met the hour and call of solemn duties, took on the sober livery of its autumn staidness and ripeness-can not this be confided in? Are life-long victories over manifold forces of evil no security? Ah! one test remains. It is a silent, patient, longwaiting detective. At last it gives in its report, and we are stricken dumb with surprise and grief. Hastily, perhaps, we say : "All is over; this is the end; there is nothing left there; here shuts down the gate of life and hope." And Time may yet correct this too hasty conclusion, and read us an unpublished story that would draw deep upon our tenderest sympathies, and forbid us to pass capital sentence upon our brother on one indictment only, when we are impeachable in many points, and lead up out of the valley of humiliation a chastened penitent, a restored wanderer, whose lore in divine grace and infinite compassion shall surpass all that we have known, whose fitness for rare and special service shall be tempered in this fiery furnace, and whose evening of life shall yet show a serene and glowing west. Hast thou, O Time! and thou, O wondrous grace of God! such revelations in store? We will pause, and hope, and pray, till the future draw back its vail.

Is there a ghost in every house, a phantom dogging every man's footsteps, a secret in every bosom? Here and there, there is a seemingly calm and self-possessed spirit, that faces tranquilly the light of day and the gaze of all-searching eyes, as though the waters flowed transparent with crystal clearness over a pebbly bed, in which the while there is yet beneath this surface-sparkling, a deep, dark pool, and at the bottom a grim, slimy monster that

never comes to the light. There lurks that leviathan for unsuspected years. No ripple above, no commotion on the surface, gives signs of the horrid life in the dark depths. The man walks. amid his fellow-men as though with a consciousness never disturbed. No infirmity of nerve ever sets him to trembling. No pause in his unsleeping vigilance betrays him into fatal admissions. In his utter solitude he sometimes faces this untold story. But no lips can ever tell it. It lies within the compass of no single knowledge. It is broken into fragments, like a shattered ring, or a fatal bond torn apart and distributed into remote and alien hands. Can those fragments ever be gathered, those parts ever be reunited? Alone and by itself, each means nothing, reveals nothing. What simultaneous impulse shall move these "disjecta membra" to come together? The thing can never be; and the keeper of the shameful secret passes on reassured. Then Times waves his wand. The hand that held one fragment molders in dust, and the eyes of executors scan curiously the torn and yet ominous leaf. From opposite meridians, as though led on by fate, come up, at the only juncture that could serve the issue, the remaining witnesses. The mutilated memorial is again a whole, but it is written in cipher, and the dream of security lingers yet. And the magic wand is lifted once more, and the hid den key drops from its hiding-place, and all is legible and patent. Time has become the minister of justice. And the last words of every dying year wake in guilty breasts this dreary echo: "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid, that shall not be known."

And yet there are those to whom this word is not dreary, but animating; not a menace, but a long-sustaining promise. They have been under a cloud. Their character has been unrighteously aspersed. Men have believed evil of them. They have been the victims of mistakes, or of circumstances, or of malignant conspiracy. The baleful torches of calumny have flared upon them and blackened them all over. Their simple assertion of innocence has been taken as brazen-fronted hardihood. Many a hand has been withdrawn from them; many a face has turned away. Friends once trustful and beloved have passed by on the other side. So they have walked on in the cold shadows of the long night, waiting for the dawn; and the slow hours rolled away. They had no hope but in God, and God sent to them this championship of Time. And one day the solution of the mystery was suddenly uncovered, and men saw how they had been deluded, and how falsely they had believed. And this patient innocence shone forth like a rising sun, the brighter for its obscuration, all the more revered that it had suffered long in uncomplaining silence. And it is seen that character is not committed to human keeping. No enemy can take it from us. We need not fear, in our innocence, the face of mortal, the malice of infernal. We can calmly

defy all machinations; and when girt about with hissing serpents, who boast that they have us in their own den and power, we can stand in the heroism of this single truth: "The Lord is on my side, I will not fear: what can man do unto me?'

Again, the real struggle of a man's life, the crisis of his moral history, Time often holds in reserve. It comes not in his sheltered boyhood, over which bend only bright and genial skies. His youth glides past him, a peaceful stream flowing on through gentle meadows. Manhood takes him by the hand, and there has been as yet no faltering in his step. He seems to have conquered in the fields of life, to have mastered his passions without a conflict. And, perhaps, gray mingles with the native hue of his hair, the seal of his confirmation in settled integrity. He knows not, and no man knows, the strength of his propensities. The hour of trial has never fairly fronted him. What a mutinous crew slumber under the hatches there he suspects not! What combustibles are gathered beneath the fair fabric of his unsullied name! What a train might be fired, what a fight he might be called to maintain, with upleaping and furious foes and flames, he never for a moment dreams! It may happen to him to know better by and by. The ripe hour hurries on. It is all the more perilous that he has never faced real and mortal danger. He has no lore of warning experience. The train is fired, and the tumult begins. Let him gird himself like a man. The combat rages. What a fearful strife! Forward and backward the tide ebbs and flows. No such strain as this has ever tested the might of his arm. He has called himself a soldier, but he has never had a field-day till now. What if it should go against him. He pants, and bleeds, and falters. Oh! woe the day, if he have not a Divine Helper, or if he forget to look up for heavenly succor! Let no man speak harshly of the fallen; let no man plume himself upon his own immaculateness. Our day may come. Low behind the bending west the distant cloud may even now be rising. Be meek, charitable, watchful, and prayerful.

God even commits his own vindication to Time. He delays, both to visit for daring wrong, and to reward patient faith. His threatenings and his promises seem laid aside, forgotten. The impious cry derisively, "Where is the promise of his coming?" and the believer: "Lord, how long?" But there is no demonstration from the silent heavens. That sovereign hand begins its work afar off. It rolls up not a single event, but an ordered and massive system. The good die while yet the consummation hoped for lingers. The vile triumph, and their seed seems established in the earth. Then on the vast, dim dial, the index points to the appointed hour, and vengeance and deliverance do their work; and, amid blasphemy confounded and righteousness exultant, sounds the blessed voice: "I the Lord will hasten it in his time." In the individual life the grandest spiritual truths are learned

late. Here, as in all learning, there is an alphabet first, and more wondrous revelations afterward. For these deeper and more radiant mysteries there must be often a peculiar preparation. The soul must have a past to look back to, to build upon. The path up the snowy Alps is at first along rugged and earthy ravines; by and by it emerges, and the dazzling peak shoots heavenward. The time of need, the hour of trial, the crisis of sharp experience, must bring the moment of revelation. We must suffer our converts to be babes; we must expect for ourselves more glowing and rapt discoveries of God's grace and loving-kindness than our poor attainments in the past have ever mastered.

But these ministries of Time touch heart-nerves in passing. They play sorely on tender chords. The music is solemn, wailing, and dirge-like. There are weeping kindreds here, who dreamed not a year ago, in their glad security, what Time had in store for them; that he should lead their best-beloved away from their circle; that he was weaving ever, while they smiled and slept, a winding-sheet for tender, fair, and manly forms; that, in the silence and in the darkness, he was digging a grave, and lettering some sweet household name in marble; that soon he should shroud their joyousness in the darkness of the tomb, their festive garments in the sable of mourning. But this he had in keeping for them. He has lent strength and grace to many a life; he has piled up bounties at every door; he has filled our garners with his loaded wains; but, alas! he has stolen from hearth-stone and fireside what he can never replace.

And yet Time has a ministry of consolation too. He heals where he wounds. It is of God that his touch has such a balm in it. He wipes away tears; he unknits the furrowed brow; he brings back the smile to the quivering lips; he leads the captive forth into the sunshine; he gathers upon the bereaved the tender and soothing spell of memory; he plants flowers in the path where bleeding feet have walked, pierced by the thorns.

What

O Time! what dost thou yet keep back from us? commissions hast thou to execute upon us in these fresh opening days of the new-born year? Whither along this track that glides always into the shadow of to-morrow dost thou lead our feet? What of joy or of sorrow, of conflict or of suffering, art thou marshaling even now? Vain guess! No voice answers. Into the mist opens no vista of light. But this we know, Time is a creature of God. It waits upon that sovereign will. It comes to us, a guide sent from heaven, to conduct us onward into the goodpleasure of One, whom in life and in death we can trust with our mortal and immortal hopes.

O Time! roll on the year; bring up the forces of the hidden future. With one hand clasping the Divine hand, and a mutual good cheer, which we make a prayer to-day, we go forward in faith and hope.

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