can always be seen except by those who walk in the moonshine of their own fancies.

But we have no evidence that dereliction of a religious duty is punished with physical suffering. And we may justly doubt it, because a connection between natural causes and effects can always be established.

Whenever there is suffering, then there is a cause, and a cause that can be discovered. There is no spontaneous generation of evils. No pestilence runs riot which has not escaped from a sealed jar, and the liberated Jin threatens death and can only be reduced to harmlessness by him who can seal him up again. Every fever has sprung from a germ, or is produced by arrested natural forces. There is no social disorder which does not point out whence it arises. There is no political disturbance without a festering wrong, and till that wrong be righted insurrection or revolution must be chronic. health of the body, and social happiness and political well-being are all tokens of observance of moral law; and moral law is simply directive force impressed on all life, individual and social, impelling it to evolution into the highest and most perfect forms of which the individual or the social body is capable. Where the creature

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of God fulfils the natural conditions, it is in health. Where the social fabric is held in equipoise between give and take, and the right of the one limits, but does not encroach on and overwhelm the right of another, there is contentment; and where in the state the just proportion is observed between authority and liberty, there is tranquillity. But where the creature of God oversteps the bounds of its right in Nature's scheme, there is pain; where the social body forces that life which is artificial in the place of that which is natural, then misery ensues; and where authority crushes the liberty out of the subject, revolution or ruin is the alternative.

How true is the sentence of Job: "Behold the fear of the Lord!—that is wisdom." The fear of the Lord operating by the laws He has imposed on Creation, and not arbitrarily. The fear of the Lord acting through periodical floods bids the wise man build his house on the rock, and avoid the sand, which marks the extent to which the river is wont to overflow. The fear of the Lord scattering the fever germs makes man wise to trap his drains, and shut the mouths of those dragons that exhale poison. The fear of the Lord who rideth upon the wings

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of the wind, and walketh on the waters, drives the merchant to discard worm-eaten boats, and be wary lest he overload his vessels. The fear of the Lord shaking His hand over our crowded jails is teaching men wisdom to multiply schools. The fear of the Lord shouting with the voice of the people gives the wisdom which breaks down despotism, and establishes political justice.

As long as men looked to saintly relics and miraculous images to cure maladies and avert catastrophes, so long God spoke in vain; like the deaf adder, man stopped his ears, and a rational view of Nature and study of her laws was impossible. But the faith which looks everywhere for judgments is scarcely less gross a superstition and not a whit less obstructive.

Does religious error or false worship entail no suffering? Most certainly it does, but not in the natural sphere.

The sun shines on the Catholic and Protestant, on the heathen and on the Christian, on the infidel and on the believer, with perfect impartiality. The lightning strikes the just man as often as the sinner; the pestilence sweeps away the innocent babe and the hardened criminal. The reformed does not enjoy ruder health than the unreformed.

But there exists a class of suffering which does bear a close connexion with the religious, the spiritual life. The soul of man has got its dynamic impulse as well as the intellect, and as well as the body. To grow and develop is the law impressed on body, mind, and soul. If the growth and development of the body be arrested, it suffers and dies. It is the same with the mind. It is the same also with the soul. Each has its walk in its special plane, and its joys and sorrows lie on these several planes.

Man's relations with God are spiritual, and his pleasures and pains are ghostly.

The soul has her sunny days, and her starless nights, her winter frost and her summer glow, her laughter and her tears, and in her intercourse with God, spiritual suffering has its mission to turn her out of error and lead her into truth.

Sometimes, no doubt, the angel of spiritual guidance holding the drawn sword may drive man blindly against a wall and crush his foot,— religious insensibleness to truth and persistency in error may lead to physical evils, for all forces in the world are correlated, but the connexion is never so hidden as not to reveal itself to the eye that seeks it.

V.

SUFFERING EVIDENTIAL.

EXOD. xix. 9.

The Lord said, "Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud."

IN

N my last lecture I spoke of the fruit of physical suffering, and I showed how that it was educative. I only touched lightly on spiritual suffering, for I proposed devoting this conference to this subject,-to the wants, the errors, and the agonies of the soul.

That spiritual suffering exists may be wholly doubted by those who have never experienced it. He that enjoys health is impatient of the languors and aches of the sickly. To speak to the clown of the delights and distresses of the artistic sense is to address him in a language of which he knows nothing. And the active man of business, whose horizon is made up of ledgers, and whose heart beats responsive solely to the pulse of the stocks, is liable to