Feast Days of the Church, we may find fresh reasons for rejoicing, and go on from step to step; rising higher above the darkness and sorrow of life; finding joy, or at any rate no painful sadness, in each anniversary, whether belonging to our own individual life, or to the Church universal.

Relative Trials

IN

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The family and Friends

N this life pleasures and pains are so closely connected, that often the things which bring the greatest enjoyment, are also the most fruitful sources of trial. Thus, although we derive our greatest earthly happiness from the kindness and love of our kindred and friends, yet they cause us trial. Their visits are often a source of great discontent and disappointment to sick people. Perhaps they are hurried and short, and before you have overcome the excitement of first seeing them, they have left you; or they may have been just at a time when you felt the least able to enjoy them, when you were very weak, or more than usually ill. Or your friends may have seemed absent, and you may have thought them cold and unkind, unsympathizing, uncaring for your circumstances; or their conversation may have been very desultory; they may have introduced a great variety

I

of subjects and dwelt upon none. You feel wearied and dissatisfied: you too well know that nothing is more exhausting to you than this kind of visit, especially if the talk has been much about persons, or mere passing events, or gossip. Or, your friends may have stayed with you much longer than you had strength for; and though at first you enjoyed their company, at last your body grew so weary, that you lost your pleasure in it, if not in them.

In their kindness they may have urged you to make efforts which you know to be impossible; and you may think that they do not understand you, and feel almost angry with them, and part with an estranged feeling, which, if it is not resisted, grows upon you. Or you may feel constrained in conversation, and that with almost every one there is some subject to be avoided, so that all intercourse is fettered. Alas! it is too true; but surely this is a trial which belongs to those in health fully as much as to you; they come more into collision with others, and really suffer from this trial oftener than you do. But you are laid aside, you dwell on each thing, see it apart from the rest, and therefore it seems to you as if your lot was a very trying and isolated one.

The subject of society is a very difficult one to sick people. Some are quite overdone by the many persons whom they see; it is an incessant wear upon their strength, a distraction to their minds, and takes up the best of their time. To some this is a great enjoyment--they like the dissipation. Tc

others it comes in the form of real, constant trial— a daily cross; if they could choose, and see only certain persons, and at certain times, they would indeed feel thankful. If circumstances make it plain that this is their calling, they have no right to try to alter it, or to groan under it; but should seek to learn how to receive each person as the present message sent to them by God for their profit, either to help and bless them, or to try their patience, and faith, and hope, and love; to exercise them in these things. Or the visitor may be sent to receive from the sick person ministries of consolation, or help, or warning. If it be plainly marked out that it is your duty to see them, that you are called to do so, then do not shrink from the suffering it may cost your body, but yield up that, as you have often done before, as a "living sacrifice,"1 and ask God to bless the visit in whatever way He sees best, and so shall you hereby "entertain angels unawares."

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Some people will tell you that you look particularly well, just when you are suffering the most. Others will say, "How much better you look than when I saw you last!" when you know and feel that you have been growing worse ever since. Some will say, "You look so much better than I expected to see you; your eyes are so bright, and you look so cheerful, you cannot surely be suffering as much as you say;" when you well know how great the effort is to be cheerful, and the enemy offers the thought to you, "Am I then to be punished for the

1 Rom. xii. 1.

2 Heb. xiii. 12.

very thing which I do, because it seems to me a Christian duty to do it?" No, not punished, but tried by it. Satan tempted Job, but God permitted it for his profit; thus it is with you. Do not be out of heart. No two persons will give you the same opinion of your appearance or state. Some will tell you that you look better, in order to cheer you; others, from ignorance; others, because they do not remember how you looked when they saw you last, and yet they think they must say something; others, from their own mood of mind at the time-if all things look bright to them, they fancy you look better, or the reverse. Others think that you are "only nervous," and that they can bring you out of it by this means; that you are deluding yourself and others, by your fancies about your health. People's words and opinions are often very teasing to the sick, and cause great searchings of heart, yet they really ought not to be heeded so much, or to cause distress. Looks, especially, are no real guides; people often look the best when they are the most ill, and the reverse. So much depends on natural appearance or complexion, and many other causes.

Do not think your friends unloving or unkind, if they never ask how you are, or show anxiety about you. Some people do this in mistaken kindness; they fancy that it does but bring your illness before you, or puts you to pain, or annoys you. It is true that some sick people have a great dislike to being asked how they are, and from various reasons.