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Entering Into the Cloud.

It must always be a part of the loving discipline which God's children are called to endure in this training school of the earthly life that they now and then enter into the cloud. Sometimes there is a long period of sunshine undimmed by any shadow, sometimes the soul mounts as if winged into the very ether around the throne, but alike in the experience of the household and of the individual there comes a day of entering into the cloud.

The cloud is not invariably the same, nor is it always a tangible shape of disaster or calamity. Rather it is in its nature variable, subtle, difficult to define, a foreboding, a presage or an apprehension based upon clearly defined conditions.

When there came to you a day in which you understood at last what the kind doctor meant when he counseled rest and change for your dear one, promising, however, no permanent cure, when you knew at last the full significance of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, then, dear friend, you entered into the cloud. It was Belle, or Eva, or Mary on whose cheek the fatal rose bloomed in solemn beauty, and night and day, as they succeeded one another, were bringing the hour when that rose glow should fade to lily pallor, and you were aware of it; and thus you entered into the cloud.

Far worse, worse beyond the power of imagination to measure, was the cloud which fell upon a lovely woman's life, when suddenly she discovered that the young husband whom she honored and trusted as the synonym of all that was noble and upright had yielded to temptation, robbed his employers and fled from justice. As she held her baby boy to her breast, and he laughed in her face with eyes and lips like his father's, that wounded one entered into the cloud.

When disgrace came upon a name that had been held beyond reproach for generations, disgrace through the wrong-doing of a son of the house, there was the entrance into the cloud for one and all connected with the unhappy youth who had erred. No trouble is so difficult to bear as trouble which comes hand in hand with shame. No calamity compares with a blow to honor. God help those who in their own persons or vicariously enter into this cloud! But, ever, there is an upper side to the cloud which infolds you, if you are God's child. You shall be lifted high over every apprehension, you shall be comforted in every tribulation, you shall be sustained in the "breaking gulfs of sorrow," because God is in the cloud with you.

In the strong daylight of prosperity you could not see His face. Perhaps He sought to reveal Himself to you when all around was gladness, and you were too much occupied, too pre-engaged, to notice the tokens of His presence. But, out of the cloud, He will speak to you; in the midst of it you shall behold One like unto the Son of Man, and great peace shall fill your soul.

The Thankful Spirit.

A perfunctory way of offering thanks is a snare into which most of us easily fali. For example, take one of our commonest devotional actions, the saying of grace at meals. Do we always bring to that daily act of worship our full attention, our reverent thoughtfulness, our entire and hearty union of sentiment and aspiration? In family prayer and in church, where the pastor speaks for the whole assembly, and even in our closets, are we not occasionally shocked to find

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that we are giving merely a superficial attention, that of habit and of routine, to what we are saying to God?

If this be so in our experience, it becomes worth cur while to ask whether or not the thankful spirit can be cultivated. Does it gain, as wealth gains, in the wise using? May it be increased by watchfulness, by solicitude, by seeking opportunities for its exercise? And, on the other hand, may it be atrophied by constant neglect, so that after a while the very capacity for thankfulness may be gone, and the withered soul receive and receive with never an impulse to gratitude?

Strangely enough, the people of whom one would extract the most outward and visible expressions of thankfulness to God for His goodness are not the

readiest in this direction. Your neighbor who has lost a dear child, your friend who is racked with pain, your acquaintance whose ships never come in, will seize upon an occasion for thanksgiving much more eagerly, as a rule, than the other on whom fortune has smiled, whose home has known no break, whose health is unimpaired. Of course this is not invariably the case. There are happy exceptions. But, generally speaking, it is true of each of us that

Trials make the promise sweet,

Trials give new life to prayer;
Trials bring me to His feet,

Lay me low and keep me there.

The dark and cloudy day, the bitter cup remind us of our need of the Father and of His readiness to help in our need. We are brought in touch with the divine when our human extremity makes us clasp and cling to the everlasting strength. And then, realizing how we have been saved, how we have been pulled through when our own strength was weakness, we put on "beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

It is a wonderful thing, and a sweet beyond description, to be always thankful. Old Matthew Henry, in his quaint fashion, once observed that thanksgiving at its best was thanks-living. "My husband," I heard a lady remark, "feels thankful all the while; I only know that I ought to feel so." To know how one ought to feel is one great step forward, but to live ever in the atmosphere-the pure, sweet, exalted atmosphere-of thankfulness is much more.

Our beautiful national custom of setting apart a day for thanksgiving annually must never be suffered to fall into desuetude. The home day, when the clans gather and rally, when bearded men, having traveled for days, arrive breathless and eager at the old threshold to keep Thanksgiving among kith and kin, when troops of grandchildren surround the old table, when all the land is thrilled and moved because of the great feast-this day is so peculiarly our very own that we must always hold it dear. Its religious and its social character should continue to be interchangeable, and the consecration to God should but make the separateness of its home joys the more precious.

Thankful in spirit, yes, we may be this, though we have our private and personal griefs, our hours of loneliness. Then to comfort some one else may be our best consolation, to uplift some bowed-down soul our own signal for exaltation.

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Where Two Ways Meet.

One day last summer you went for a drive. You were away from home and you did not know the country very well, and, naturally, when you arrived at a point on the road where it branched off in two opposite directions, you were much puzzled which way to turn. Both roads invited. This might lead to a beautiful view, or to the nearest village; the other might take you to the sea, or might abruptly lose itself in an old farm lane. Right of way seemed equally yours and guidepost there was none.

Often in life we meet experiences similar to this. We arrive at a point where we do not know how to decide on our future course. Two or more paths are open, but we do not know which we would better take and we fear to make a mistake, because a mistake will involve more than ourselves in its inevitable train of consequences.

It would be less complex always if we were not so interdependent. But what I do in Brooklyn to-day may set in motion a series of events which will affect Ethel in San Francisco, John in Drury, Rebecca in St. Augustine, Lettie in far-off Manitoba. A word that you speak, a step that you take, may keep on in its influence, never stopping there, till its last receding ripple breaks on the shore of the jasper sea.

Twenty-five years ago a boy came to a young married friend with a question of conscience. He did not know how to decide it. There were urgent reasons why he should enter on a business life immediately, and there was an imperious desire impelling him to undertake a long and self-denying struggle to obtain a liberal education. The young woman gave the lad the counsel that was put into her heart for him. To-day he is a successful pastor, preaching by voice and pen to a multitude, and especially stimulating and helpful to young men. Where two ways met, he was guided into the path of the larger opportunity, the more abundant blessing.

Many of us are always impatient of indecision. We cannot endure the stress of inaction. Any course, we think, is preferable to doing nothing. Yet at times we are absolutely hedged in by obstacles, so that, for the moment, our strength is literally to sit still. Sometimes we must lie fallow. Our intellectual and spiritual nature demands repose. At such periods the decision between this or that path is taken out of our hands. We can only await the hour of returning vigor. "Tarry thou the Lord's leisure," is for the day the form of our marching orders.

But again there dawns the day when we must decide on some positive, definite course, and abide by our decision. We pray for light, for a divine intimation, for the fulfillment of the promise, "Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee, saying, This is the way!" And, having prayed and resolved, we act. We accept the

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