I. MISTAKEN SIGNS. Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.'-ECCLES. vii. 10. ΟΝ N the whole we may confidently affirm that the world improves, and yet in certain moods we are apt to regard its condition as increasingly desperate. Thus we are persuaded is it sometimes with our religious life—we mistake the signs of progress for those of retrogression, and through this mistake do injustice to ourselves. There is always, of course, the danger of regarding ourselves with too indulgent eye, but with really sincere men the chief peril, we must insist, lies the other way: they more frequently write unjustifiably bitter things against themselves than lay flattering unction to their soul. "The mind, An artist at creating self-alarmıs,' is not more ingenious or fertile in creating needless fears about the natural life than it is in creating such fears about our inner life. And we must not regard this unjust self-accusation, this grieving of the soul when God has not grieved it, this voluntary humiliation of the spirit, as a comparatively innocent error, and one altogether on the side of safety. The sense of progress is a mighty spring of progress, and to destroy a legitimate sense of progress is to cut one of the main sinews of the soul, and arrest that growth in power and holiness which we so greatly desire. If there is a needs be' that we are in heaviness,' and God is pleased to permit shadows to gather on our mind and path, blessing will come out of the discipline; but to plunge our soul into gratuitous disquietudes can only impair and impede our spiritual life. We must guard our heart with jealousy, and take care also that we do not enfeeble ourselves by unwisely marring a genuine confidence and joy. The misinterpreting signs of spiritual progress into signs of decadence-to the loss of much power and gladness-we believe to be a common error, and propose a few guiding thoughts on the subject. I am not so happy as I once was,' is a lament from Christian lips with which we are almost distressingly familiar. We look back to our conversion, to our original dedication to God, to the deeply-coloured dawn of our spiritual history, to the glittering joy which welled up in our soul in those days, to the bright beams which were then shed upon us from the opened heaven, and the memory moves us to tears. Then 'all things |