event; and presently it fulfils its warning, and rings in a noisy revolution. But there! as its index travels on so resolute and tranquil, what tears and raptures attend its progress! It was only another wag of the sleepless pendulum: but it was fraught with destiny, and a fortune was made-a heart was broken-an empire fell. We cannot read the writings on the mystic cogs as they are coming slowly up; but each of them is coming on God's errand, and carries in its graven brass a Divine decree. Now, howevernow that the moment is past, we know; and in the fulfilment we can read the fiat. This instant was to say to Solomon, "Be born!" this other was to say to Solomon in all his glory, "Die!" That instant was to "plant" Israel in Palestine; that other was to pluck him up." And thus inevitable, inexorable, the great clock of human destiny moves on, till a mighty Hand shall grasp its heart and hush for ever its pulse of iron.

See how fixed, how fated is each vicissitude! how independent of human control! There is " a time to be born," and however much a man may dislike the era on which his existence is cast, he cannot help himself: that time is his, and he must make the most of it. Milton need not complain that his lot is fallen on evil days; for these are his days, and he can have no other. Roger Bacon and Galileo need not grudge their precocious being, that they have been prematurely launched into the age of inquisitors and knowledge-quenching monks for this age was made to make them. And so with the time to die. Voltaire need not offer half his fortune to buy six weeks' reprieve; for if the appointed moment has arrived, it cannot pass into eternity without taking the sceptic with it. And even good Hezekiah-his tears and prayers would not have turned the shadow backward, had that moment of threatened death been the moment of God's intention.

Yes, there is a time to die; and though we speak of an untimely end, no one ever died a moment sooner than God designed, nor lived a moment longer. And so there is "a time to plant." The impulse comes on the man of fortune, and he lays out his spacious lawn, and studs it with massive trees; and he plans his garden, and in the sod imbeds the rarest and richest flowers, or he piles up little mounts of blossomed shrubbery, till the place is dazzled with bright tints and dizzy with perfume. And that impulse fades away, and in the fickleness of sated opulence the whole is rooted up, and converted into wilderness again. Or by his own or a successor's fall, the region is doomed to destruction; and when strangling nettles have choked the geraniums and the lilies, and, crowded into atrophy, the lean plantations grow tall and branchless, the axe of an enterprising purchaser clears away the dank thickets, and his ploughshare turns up the weedy parterre. There is a time when to interfere with disease is to destroy; when to touch the patient is to take his life and there is a time when the simplest medicine will effect a marvellous cure. There is a time when the invader is too happy to dismantle the fortress which so long held him in check; but by and by, when he needs it as a bulwark to his own frontiers, with all his might he builds it up again. Nor can any one fix a date and say, I shall spend that day merrily, or I must spend it mournfully. The day fixed for the wedding may prove the day for the funeral; and the ship which was to bring back the absent brother, may only bring his coffin. On the other hand, the day we had destined for mourning, God may turn to dancing, and may gird it with irresistible gladness. Nor are earth's monuments perpetual. The statue reared one day will be thrown into the river another, and the trophy commenced by one conqueror shall owe its completion to his rival and supplanter.

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"There is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing." "There is a time when the fondness of friendship bestows its caresses, and receives them in return with reciprocal sincerity and delight; and a time when the ardour cools; when professions fail; when the friend of our bosom's love proves false and hollow-hearted, and the sight of him produces only the sigh and tear of bitter recollection. We refrain from embracing, because our embrace is not returned.”

"There is a time to get, and a time to lose." There is a time when every enterprise succeeds; when as if he were a Midas, whatsoever the prosperous merchant touches, is instantly gold; then comes a time when all is adverse-when flotillas sink, when ports are closed, and each fine opening only proves another and a tantalizing failure. And so there is "a time to keep, and a time to cast away." There is a time when in the cutting blast the traveller is fain to wrap his cloak more closely around him; a time when in the torrid beam he is thankful to be rid of it. There is a time when we cannot keep too carefully the scrip or satchel which contains the provision for our journey: a time when to outrun the pursuing assassin, or to bribe the red-armed robber, we fling it down without a scruple. It was a time to keep when the sea was smooth, and Rome's ready market was waiting for the corn of Egypt; but it was a time to cast the wheat into the sea, when the angry ocean clamoured for the lives of thrice a hundred passengers.*

Such are the unquestionable alternations in human affairs; and thus accurately do occasions and events fit into one another. So much of mechanism does there appear to be in the on-goings of mortality, and thus helpless seems man as the maker of his own destiny. But lifting our eyes from the mundane side

* Acts xxvii. 38.

of it, what shall we say concerning him who is the Contriver and Controller of it all?

And should it not be enough to say that God has so arranged it? To him are owing all this variety and vicissitude, and yet all this order and uniformity. And is not it enough that He so wills it? "Shall the thing formed say to him who made it, Why hast thou made me thus ?

But not only has God made everything, but there is a beauty in this arrangement, where all is fortuitous to us, but all is fixed by him. "He hath made everything beautiful in its time; and that season

must be beautiful which to infinite Love and Wisdom seems the best.

Amongst modern processes, one of the most beautiful is the art of taking sun-pictures. Instead of the artist copying the object, he lets the object copy itself; and if the light were profuse enough and properly adjusted, the picture would be as true as noon, and as minute as the original. Now, would not it be a curious thing if, from a station high enough, one could take a vast sun-picture of this city-this island-this hemisphere ? showing precisely how at the selfsame instant all its inhabitants are occupied ?-where every one of them is this moment posted, and what each one of them is doing? And would it not be very curious if along with this there were preserved a similar picture of the selfsame people and their employments, at a given instant ten or twenty years ago? But most curious of all would it not be, if some one could show a photographic panorama of how it will appear ten or twenty years hereafter ?—projecting every person in his proper place ?-exhibiting the groups which have meanwhile gathered round him or melted from his side?-the changes which have passed over himself, or which he has been the means of inducing over others? But, my friends, there is one repository

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where such pictures are preserved-far more exact and vivid than the finest sun-painting ever drawn ; there is not a day in our world's past history but its minutest image lives in the memory of God, and more than that, there is not a day in all the coming history of our world but its portrait, precise and clear, is already present to the Divine foreknowledge. "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the creation;" and so to speak, each day that dawns, though its dawning include an earthquake, a battle, or a deluge-each day that dawns, however many it surprises, is no surprise to him who sees the end from the beginning, and who, in each evolving incident

but sees the fulfilment of "his determinate counsel" -the translation into fact of one other omniscient picture of the future.

And which is best? "A mighty maze and all without a plan? a world whose progress takes even Providence by surprise, and whose future stands before even the Infinite Mind in no clearer outline than those dim guesses and dusky foreshadowings to which even shrewd mortals attain ?-or a world of which the successive epochs shall only be the outworking of a purpose so wise and good from the first that it cannot be changed for the better?—the realization in persons and actions and results of that series of prescient maps or plans whose aggregate will constitute the optimism of the universe ?-as we read in verse 11, "God hath set its destined duration in the heart of everything." To every incident or event he has not only given its immediate effect, but also its remoter errand far in the future. Each such incident or event may be regarded as a mechanism wound up to travel so far or accomplish so much, so that, till its course is finished, till the beginning comes round to the end, no man can say positively what was God's first purpose in it. When the young German grew earnest, you would have said there was