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I. THE MYSTERY OF NATURE. John Stuart Mill's arraignment of created things is too well known to be repeated. A more recent writer is Mr. Laing, who says in his Modern Science and Modern Thought, "Is it true that love is creation's finest law, when we find this enormous and apparently prodigal waste of life going on; these cruel internecine battles between individuals and species in the struggle for existence; this cynical indifference of nature to suffering? There are approximately 3,600 millions of deaths of human beings in every century, of whom at least 20 per cent., or 720 millions, die before they have attained to clear self-consciousness and conscience. What becomes of them? Why were they born? Axe they nature's failures and cast as rubbish to the void? To such questions there is no answer." Perhaps it is wrong to say there is no answer, for considerations exist in plenty which tone down the harsher aspects of nature's work. But when this is admitted there remains much that is enigmatical. Now, the effect of this mystery upon some minds is to drive them into pessimism; it is a mystery whose discord is for ever jarring on their ears. Not so with the man who walks by faith. He says, "I believe in God," and instantly there is harmony. Nature has mysteries still, but they are set to music.

II. THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING. Huxley says, "If there is one thing plainer than another, it is that neither the pleasure nor the pains of life, in the merely animal world, are distributed according to desert, for it is admittedly impossible for the lower order of sentient beings to deserve either the one or the other. If there is a generalization from the facts of human life which has the assent of thoughtful men in every age and country it is that the violator of ethical rules constantly escapes the punishment he deserves; that the wicked flourishes like a green bay tree while the righteous begs his bread; that the sins of their fathers are visited upon the children; that in the realm of nature ignorance is punished just as severely as wilful wrong; and that thousands upon thousands of innocent beings suffer for the crime or unintentional trespass of one." (Evolution and Ethics, p. 12.) The professor's statements are not cast in such a form as to be above challenge, but they may be taken as indicative of the attitude of many towards the problem of suffering. Broken law will explain much of the world's woe, perhaps more than we are apt to imagine; and the educative influence of suffering is not far to seek. "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress." But after all there remains much that is mysterious; very often moral sequences seem to fail entirely, and the good man dies in his struggles to do right, whilst the prosperous sinner lives to satirize every sound principle of commercial morality. Hence we have the cynic in our midst, and the pessimist is always within shouting distance. But the man who discerns spiritual things after a spiritual manner can feel something more than hard and unexplainable facts in the problem of suffering. God is behind it, he says, and therefore all is well. The mystery has lost its bitterness; it is still a dark saying, but it is a dark saying upon the harp.

III. THE MYSTERY OF DEATH. Mr. Goldwin Smith looking at death and destruction in all grades of creation says, "Our satellite, so far as we can see, is either a miscarriage or a wreck," and "if omnipotence and benevolence are to meet it must apparently be at a point at present beyond our ken." Mr. Smith answers himself when he says, "so far as we can see." Without God and immortality, the despair of the present generation is the most natural product of mental inquiry; the picture of blighted prospects and incompleted lives stricken down by the hand of death is enough to appal the stoutest heart. But in Christ all mysteries are set to music. It was the superior music of Orpheus which saved him from shipwreck on the siren's shore, and since hope springs eternal in the human breast, Christianity, as a gospel of glad tidings, will always play other tunes than the note of wailing and despair; in the future, as in the past, her better music will be the world's salvation.

(T. S. Knowlson.)

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KJV: I will incline mine ear to a parable: I will open my dark saying upon the harp.

WEB: I will incline my ear to a proverb. I will open my riddle on the harp.