IV.

JESUS VEILING HIS DEALING S.

"Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."-JOHN, XIII. 7.

UR Lord, when he spake these words, had just risen from the lowliest act of his most lowly life. Around that act there was thrown a veil of mystery which partially concealed its purport and its end from the view of his wondering disciple. There was much in this simple but expressive incident of the Saviour's life which filled his mind with perplexing thought. His first feeling was that of resistance, to be succeeded by one of astonishment, still deeper. He had marked each step in the strange proceeding-the loosened sandal, the bathing of the feet, the replacing of the robe; but the deep significance of the whole was to his view wrapped in impenetrable mystery. And how did the Saviour meet his perplexity? Not by denying its mysteriousness, but by a promise of clearer light anon. "Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." And this explanation and assurance satisfied the mind of the amazed disciple. "Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”

Each individual believer has a personal interest in this subject, especially those to whom these pages are inscribed, the Father's chastened ones. These words imply a concealment of much of the Lord's procedure with his people. It is our wisdom to know that no pure, unmixed sorrow, ever befalls the Christian sufferer. Our Lord Jesus flung the curse and the sin to such an infinite distance from the church, that could his faith. but discern it, the believer would see nothing but love painting the darkest cloud that ever threw its shadow upon his spirit. Akin to the preceding subject is the one upon which we now propose briefly to address the suffering reader. It speaks of a veiling of Christ's dealings, with the promise of an unveiling in a day far sunnier and happier than this. What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

With regard to our heavenly Father, there can be nothing mysterious, nothing inscrutable to him. A profound and awful mystery himself, yet to his infinite mind there can be no darkness, no mystery at all. His whole plan-if plan it may be called-is before him. Our phraseology, when speaking of the divine procedure, would sometimes imply the opposite of this. We talk of God's foreknowledge, of his foresight, of his acquaintance with events yet unborn; but there is in truth no such thing. There are no tenses with God— no past―nor present-nor to come. The idea of God's Eternity, if perfectly grasped, would annihilate in our minds all such humanizing of the Divine Being. He is

one-ETERNAL Now. All events to the remotest period of time, were as vivid and as present to the divine mind from eternity, as when at the moment they assumed a real existence and a palpable form.

But all the mystery is with us, poor finite creatures of a day. And why, even to us, is any portion of the divine conduct thus a mystery? Not because it is in itself so, but mainly and simply because we cannot see the whole as God sees it. Could it pass before our eye, as from eternity it has before his, a perfect and a complete whole, we should then cease to wonder, to cavil and repine. The infinite wisdom, purity, and goodness, that originated and gave a character, a form, and a colouring, to all that God does, would appear as luminous to our view as to his, and ceaseless adoration and praise would be the grateful tribute of our loving hearts.

Throw back a glance upon the past, and see how little you have ever understood of all the way God has led you. What a mystery-perhaps, now better explained-has enveloped his whole proceedings! When Joseph, for example, was torn from the homestead of his father, sold, and borne a slave into Egypt, not a syllable of that eventful page of his history could he spell. All was to his mind as strange and unreadable as the hieroglyphics of the race, whose symbolical literature and religion now for the first time met his eye. And yet God's way with this his servant was perfect. And could Joseph have seen at the moment

that he descended into the pit, whither he was cast by his envious brethren, all the future of his history as vividly and as palpably as he beheld it in after years, while there would have been the conviction that all was well, we doubt not that faith would have lost much of its vigour, and God much of his glory. And so with good old Jacob. The famine,-the parting with Benjamin, the menacing conduct of Pharaoh's prime minister, wrung the mournful expression from his lips, « All these things are against me." All was veiled in deep and mournful mystery. Thus was it with Job, to whom God spake from the whirlwind that swept every vestige of affluence and domestic comfort from his dwelling. And thus, too, with Naomi, when she exclaimed, “Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty." How easy were it to multiply these examples of veiled and yet all-wise dispensations!

And is this the way of the Lord with you, my reader? Are you bewildered at the mazes through which you are threading your steps; at the involved circumstances of your present history; the incidents which seem so netted and interlaced one with the other as to present to your view an inextricable labyrinth? Deem yourself not alone in this. No mystery has lighted upon your path but what is common to the one family of God: "This honour have all his saints." The Shepherd is leading you, as all the flock are led, with a skilful hand and in

a right way. It is yours to stand if he bids you, or to follow if he leads. "He giveth no account of any of his matters," assuming that his children have such confidence in his wisdom, and love, and uprightness, as, in all the wonder-working of his dealings with them, to "be still and know that he is God." That it is to the honour of God to conceal, should in our view justify all his painful and humiliating procedure with us. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing," as it will be for his endless glory by and by fully to reveal it all. But there is one thing, Christian sufferer, which he cannot conceal. He cannot conceal the love that forms the spring and foundation of all his conduct with his saints. Do what he will, conceal as he may; be his chariot the thick clouds, and his way in the deep sea; still his love betrays itself, disguised though it may be in dark and impenetrable providence. There are under tones, gentle and tender, in the roughest accents of our Joseph's voice. And he who has an ear ever hearkening to the Lord, and delicately attuned to the gentlest whisper, shall often exclaim," Speak, Lord, how and when and where thou mayest-it is the voice of my beloved!"

But we have arrived at an interesting and cheering truth-the full unveiling of all the Lord's dealings in a holier and a brighter world. "What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." That there is a present partial understanding of God's will and ways concerning us, we readily concede. We may, now and then, see a needs be for his conduct. The veil is