can, at the best, only "see as through a glass, darkly," yet it will be found that the eye of the mind will gradually adapt itself to a new medium, and each hour will reveal to the believer stronger evidences of guiding wisdom and protecting love.

It is an indisputable fact, that each of us has a "daily cross" to bear: no impatient efforts on our own part will avail to shake off the burden. Anger will not make others gentle; discontent will not alter circumstances; an unforgiving temper will not avert offences. There is but one way to lighten the burden of the inevitable "daily cross;" and that is, the spirit in which it is borne. If, instead of rebelliously seeking to escape from it, the commands of the blessed Saviour, "to take it up," were obeyed, grace would then be given to see, day by day, more and more distinctly, how each harassing vexation is specially adapted, by the love and the wisdom of God, to bring us hourly into closer

conformity with this image. The daily annoyances of life will altogether change their aspect, when we learn by experience, that they are each and all exactly calculated to promote our sanctification, to increase our real happiness, even upon earth. For that happiness is not to be advanced by the alteration of mere external circumstances, which, however they may alter, will still be accompanied by their own peculiar daily cross: happiness, on the contrary, depends alone on the temper of mind with which these circumstances are met.

It has been truly said, that "the pain is not in that which seems to wound us, but in ourselves." And thus the small annoyances of every-day life may serve to show us which are the more tender, and which the diseased parts of our mental constitution. They are sent, not at random, but for the purpose of eradicating every hitherto-undiscovered root of bitterness; of bending the stubborn will; of

humbling to the dust every imagination of self-righteousness. To make them effectual for this purpose, however, there is need of close inquiry respecting the nature of the annoyances that affect our daily peace; there is need of constant self-examination; above all, of earnest prayer. "The heart is deceitful above all things," and if we do not obtain of God the freely-offered gift of His enlightening Spirit, no correct view can be taken of our own mental and moral condition. For no efforts of human will, no powers of human intellect, can ever avail to enable us to view aright the real nature of sin - its cost, its penalty. Be it ever remembered that a part of this penalty is exacted here; a part of the penalty is temporal unhappiness. Discipline becomes necessary on account of past sin; and it is on account of present sin, that discipline gives pain and irritates.

It is hoped that the plan recommended in the following pages may be found a help to

some of those who have been hitherto vainly mourning over the burden of their "daily cross," instead of obeying the Saviour's injunction, to "take it up," and seeking for experimental conviction of the wisdom that adapted a peculiar cross to their own peculiar case. We are, in general, too vague, too indefinite in the vigilance exercised against temptations, in endeavours after greater conformity of our own will to the will of God. If the system were tried, of directing all our watchfulness, for a given time, towards the temptations to which we are chiefly liable on one particular point, there would be less danger of such temptations being unnoticed or yielded to. The nature of "the daily cross," of the discipline of life, would then be more correctly understood; and the grateful sense of God's loving-kindness, manifested in the Wisdom of that discipline would proportionally deepen and increase : "good-will towards men would increase also. Many, who before

deemed that the heaviest part of their daily cross was imposed by the errors and selfishness of others, would learn, by careful selfexamination, that the pain was in themselves, not in the instrument that inflicted it; that even where present annoyance is intentionally given, it is generally the result of some impression left by a former sinful act or sinful word, till now unremembered and unrepented of. Any trial ought to be esteemed a blessing, whether a heavy affliction or a harassing petty annoyance, which "brings our sin to remembrance," and thus affords an opportutunity of laying it, in penitence and tears, at the feet of Him, whose "blood cleanseth from all sin." We have no certainty that any sin which is not, during our present state of probation, washed out in the atoning blood of Christ, may not lessen by so much the capacity for happiness throughout eternity. There is nowhere a promise of pardon to unrepented sin.

Therefore ought we to look upon it as