November 8

Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.

WHEN the minds of men seem to fall into confusion, deserted by the simple sanctities of their fathers but not yet emerging into any clearness of their own; when, for want of any firm foothold of right, authority quails and rude forces triumph; when audacity seizes upon states, yet is itself afflicted with the wavering of irremediable doubt; when churches, enfeebled within by puerile superstitions, stand amid a rising flood of atheistic denial; when the distinctions slip away between veracity and pretence, between trade and theft, between modesty and licence; we might well despond if we did not look beyond the present, and interpret it by the light of a diviner thought than animates its actors. But lifted to an adequate distance from it, and assigning to it its place in the Providence of humanity, we discern it but as a pulsation in the line of time, one of those moments of alternate tension and relaxation which are separately dark, but together make the very light by which we see. Thither, to that divine elevation above momentary things, let the soul resort in faith; and the sorrowful clouds that shut it in are surmounted, and the everlasting sunshine reached. In frailty and in trembling, we rest in an eternal calm. In loneliness, we have still an ever-living communion. Deserted by the voices of affection, we are with Him who attuned their sweetness, and will console their loss. And dying, we do but pass to the very source and home of life.

JAMES MAR- TINEAU, Hours of Thought

THE VICTORY