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Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues."

"From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For Thou hast been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in Thy tabernacle for ever; I will trust in the covert of Thy wings."

And it is because the daily exercise of definite and direct trust in a present God, involves, of necessity, a life of consistency therewith, which again reacts to strengthen the habit of confidence,—it is because trust must be the consequence of personal intimacy and communion with Him, and, in its turn, must result in the closening of that intimacy and in the deepening of that communion, that we would dwell upon its attainment as that which most dignifies while it most sweetens the ordinary ways of life. For we hold it impossible that his walk shall be careless and unguarded, who, of necessity brings to God each confidence and each circumstance of his every-day life; while we equally hold it impossible that a life so maintained shall not be rich in answered prayers and

in realized providences continually resulting in closer communion and in the joys of the heart fixed, trusting in the Lord.

We believe that most of us think little of the extent to which daily efforts and acquirements in trust glorify the monotonies of homely and uneventful lives. For it is easier in the sunshines and storms of marked Providences to discern the interposition of an unseen Hand, than in the dead calms of life, in years of grey and seldom-ruffled quiet, when day succeeds day with uniform aspect, and the spirit within becomes impatient of the sameness and weariness of its orbit, and sighs for effort, enterprise, work-almost, even, for adversity—if there might but be more clearly made manifest special remembrance, peculiar thought concerning its difficulties and its needs on the part of the Lord Most High. And those who raise such lives to the high rank of consecrated lives, and who make each day a holy day by fresh exercises of child-like trust-by fresh experiments, if we may so call them, in the efficacy of casting all care on Him who careth for usshall meet for response to their confident exclamation "My soul trusteth in Thee; in the shadow

of Thy wings will I make my refuge," a blessing of olden time wherein trust is recognized as high service: "The Lord recompense thy work; and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel under whose wings Thou art come to trust."

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"The Lord is good: a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knoweth them which trust in Him." Thus, in the midst of a dark and stormy prophecy, does light break in for them that believe. And such will be their experience who in the first days of faith, and with an untried path dimly revealed before them, cried "If the Lord will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my Father's house in peace, so shall the Lord be my God."

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"My Father's house!" For upon self-dedication, upon the first plight of trust in the place of first communion with God, follows a burst of anticipation, with assured possession, of the many mansions which await the journey's end. The sudden throb of an unspeakable joy, the sudden rush of an unutterable hope, the sudden

realization of a pledged entrance into the joys of the land very far off, for a while compel the difficulties and warfare of the commencing pilgrimage to dwindle into insignificance, and to be dismissed as trifles of the passage territory swallowed up in the great and sure future. There is not unseldom a refraction of the spiritual atmosphere whereby, from the starting-point of the new life, the golden towers of the longed-for City are brought into view. There is not unseldom, in the first glad appropriation of the "all things are yours" of adoption, an overlooking of the inclusion therein of the sufferings of Christ which must be accepted with the hope of the glory that shall follow. To the soldier's first enlistment belongs the bounty-money; to the Christian's first entrance into covenant, the promises of fellowship, support, protection, home, in all the freshness of first realization.

So that placing stone upon stone he may go forth, sharing with Israel the adoption and the glory and the covenants, and without fear for the unknown way. The memorial pillar which has been set up shall be for ever a remembrance of a revelation whereof the world knows not,

of his own secret and the Lord's. It is the one monument of life wherewith no earthly sorrow may intermingle-the record to which, in all future seasons of doubt and anxiety, his heart may turn as to the very witness of his calling. Yes, he must go forth now. The vision has passed away. The morning sun has risen on his path. The outer world is as it was-he only is changed. For the Holy Ghost has come upon him, and the power of the Highest has overshadowed him: and while he inscribes upon the memorial stone of his first acquaintance with God the indelible record "Surely the Lord was in this place," he carries thence the promise of adoption, "Behold I am with thee: and I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of."

But

Like Israel of old, whose way brought him to the land of the children of the east, his path may lie among a strange people, his course may lead through many an unfriendly territory. he is homeward bound: and whether toil, suffering, weariness, or success attend his steps, they shall only minister as God's messengers to the inheritor of the kingdom, until, not only in

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