My friends, of this let us be perfectly sure; that whatever may be Christ's silences to those who deserve them, He is never really silent to those who desire His salvation, and crave His grace, and bear His cross, and trust His love. It is easier for the sun to fall out of the sky than for Him to be hard, or cold, or indifferent to the humblest soul that seeks His face. For a moment He may seem to be on the top of the mountain far away in the darkness, while we are being tossed in the storm. It is night, and Jesus is not with us. But the faintest cry of distress, or alarm, or loneliness reaches Him as He offers His intercession for us. He hastens to us, though in a shape we may not always recognize, and in a way that we cannot instantly understand. Yet, whether He comes walking on the water over the midnight sea; or hails us from the shore, wearied with thankless toil; or at the graveside speaks to us, while the tears blind Him, it is no longer true of Him that He answers us not a word. The silence is broken. His voice whispers, "It is I; be not afraid," and there is a great calm.

THE POWER OF COURAGE.

"The worst of the worthy people is that they are such cowards. A man groans over a wrong; he holds his tongue, he eats his supper and he forgets all about it."

THE POWER OF COURAGE,

Preached at the Consecration of Lyss Church, July 2, 1892.

"Fear not, but let your hands be strong."-ZECH. viii. 13.

IT cannot be hard to see how the Church of Zechariah's time needed the tonic of vigorous counsel. For there was something to fear then; and to be absolutely free from anxiety would have implied either the presence of a stolid apathy, or the lack of a righteous jealousy for God. The yet recent captivity had worked its iron into men's souls. The ruined temple, while it demanded their entire energies, rapidly exhausted them. Disunion in their midst bred a sour and paralyzing suspiciousness, and mocking enemies under the shadow of the city walls threw a chill into their hearts. Yet even then the prophet did not shrink from forbidding them to fear; and while he deprecated the mischief, indicated the remedy. That remedy, if we may so speak of it in our modern conventional language, is the very perfection of good sense. Clearly he might have said, "Your alarm is exaggerated," which though true would have been liable to be disputed. Or he might have suggested that with a little patience it would disappear, which would have been like comforting a farmer gazing on his drenched crops with the prospect of next year's

harvest. What he does say not only inculcates a precept, but presses the way of performing it; for while he forbids alarm, his antidote is duty. "Fear not, but let your hands be strong."

To work, my friends, is the secret of courage for us all. For while it is noble to trust, and inspiring to hope, and prudent to watch, and manful to wait, and blessed to pray, there are crises in life when the trusting, and hoping, and watching, and waiting, and praying are to be all welded and concentrated in action. When Joshua, after the defeat at Ai, fell on his face before the Captain of the Lord's host, the answer came to him-" Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus on thy face?... Up, sanctify the people." To the apostles in Gethsemane, roused, ashamed, penitent, ready, had they had the chance to watch and pray ten nights with their Lord, the monition came with almost a stern promptness-" Rise, let us be going."

And the reason is plain. The heart brooding over weakness and danger magnifies them, and thereby makes its task heavier. Anticipated difficulties sometimes never happen; and then we have wasted moral nerve, and perhaps wholesome emotion, in slaying lions that do not cross our path. It is not only actual power we need to make us strong, but that consciousness of it which gives it its leverage; and whatever diminishes the leverage checks the force. Possessed with its duty, happy in it, and too much absorbed in it either to watch the fleeting clouds, or to listen to the cawing of gloomy idlers, the soul holds itself in peace; and evil tidings, when they come, cannot move it from its steadfastness.

"Fear not, but let your hands be strong." About which words, let me first observe that the prophet did not mean