unknown. The earthly disappointments are only stepping-stones each toward these serene final summits; the restlessness of earth, only the traveller's enforced diligence in pursuing his road quite to its goal. Our ignorance, that stumbles and halts so often, and catches up such inferior good as though it could be content with it as a portion, and grieves so to lay it down, covers this heritage of everlasting joy and peace. All the busy, earnest years that lie between the starting-point and the goal, all the rich investments of our heart's deep love, — the fond, warm covenants in which we pledge a union not to be sundered, — all personal and domestic ties, all social bonds growing out of our life with the full vitality of nature and of grace in them, are but the training and discipline for our nurture unto his great and blessed purposes ready to be revealed in us at the last.

If we saw now and beforehand as clearly as we shall see the meaning of each particular part of the grand scheme, we should miss the full power of its ministry upon the growth of our souls toward the stature of their immortal manhood. Let us give faith's rendering to the poet's rhymes.

"When another life is added

To the heaving, turbid mass;

When another breath of being

Stains creation's tarnished glass;

When the faint cry, weak and piteous,

Heralds long-enduring pain,

And a soul from non-existence

Springs that ne'er shall sleep again;
When the mother's passionate welcome,

Sorrow-like, bursts forth in tears,

but best of all that, not seeing, we can both hope and trust.

XIV.

PLEA FOR THE MONTHLY CONCERT.

AND WHEN THEY WERE COME, AND HAD GATHERED THE CHURCH TOGETHER, THEY REHEARSED ALL THAT THE LORD HAD DONE WITH THEM, AND HOW HE HAD OPENED THE DOOR OF FAITH UNTO THE GENTILES. —Acts. xiv. 27.

OR graphic and even romantic interest, there is no other book of the Bible that surpasses this book of the Acts of the Apostles. As its name indicates, it is a book of action. You are led by it along a story of marvellous adventures. There is not one dull chapter. Every page is stirring and eventful. Neither history nor fiction ever traced a chronicle more crowded with strange and thrilling scenes. And the line of adventure is not, either in its inspiration or its consequences, frivolous and transient. The scheme that marshalled the journeyings and the sufferings of these heroic actors was nothing less than to "open the door of faith" to nations ignorant of Christ and his salvation. What a lyric and picturesque touch of the pen of Luke in this expression, -"opening the door of faith"! A door of light upon deep darkness, a door of deliverance for the bondmen of superstition and idolatry, a door beneath whose grand arch, and

through whose stately portals, the long, bright procession of the Christian virtues should enter in and possess the realms of barbarism, degradation, and cruelty! Perhaps it will be popularly, though it cannot be to Christian hearts, a less taking version if we say it is a record of missionary labors, missionary trials, and missionary successes. It is the first volume of the long work of the Church in obedience to that command, at once so full of the love and the authority of Jesus, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

In the scene outlined in our text, we are introduced into a missionary meeting, whose special purpose is the communication of missionary intelligence. To the disciples at Antioch belongs the honor of the first mission ever sent forth by a Christian Church. Moved by the Holy Ghost, with fasting and prayer, and the laying on of hands, they had set apart Barnabas and Saul to the missionary work. (You read concerning this inauguration service at the beginning of the present chapter.) From such "Farewell" these two intrepid brethren had gone forth from city to city, with various fortune, through perils and sufferings, with ever increasing boldness, preaching the death and resurrection of Jesus, and salvation through him. At length, after persecutions and stonings, rejected of the Jews, but with great and good success among the Gentiles, they had completed their tour, and now stood again among their brethren at Antioch. The whole Church came together to hear these returned missionaries. There was no need of urging an attendance upon that meeting. None said, "It is only a missionary meeting; it will be