providential dealings with him, or to read aright any one day in his
life! Was it possible for Job's friends to interpret, _at the time_,
Job's sufferings? God alone could have corrected Jacob when, in the
dark night of his sorrow, yet just before the daybreak of his joy
in Egypt, he cried, "Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and will ye take
Benjamin away?--_all these things are against me!_" Daniel in the
lions' den, or the three young men in the furnace, with a wicked king
in peace upon the throne; John the Baptist in the dungeon, with Herod
in the banquet hall; Stephen falling asleep beneath the shower of
cruel stones, and Saul gazing complacently at the murderers' clothes
laid at his feet:--these, and a thousand other such incidents in human
history, are, to beholders, involved in a portion of that darkness
which hung over the cross of Christ itself, at the time, a mystery of
mysteries to all who witnessed its agonies! But when, from the history
of persons, we rise to the contemplation of the history of cities,
countries, and nations; or ascend to a still higher region in order to
take in, if possible, the history of the human race from age to age;
and to comprehend what Jesus Christ has done for it, and how He
has governed it,--how much more profound is the darkness! If, for
instance, we endeavour to form any estimate of the effect which has
been produced upon the character and destiny of mankind by the present
structure of the physical earth, with its mountains, seas, rivers,
winds, and climate--the house which Jesus Christ has built and
furnished for His creatures; by the famines and pestilences, wars and
conquests, migrations and settlements, arising out of circumstances
more or less controlling man, and beyond his will; as well as by all
that has come, as it were, directly from Jesus, through His Church,
from Eden till this present hour;--how infinite to us is the field
of observation! "O the depth of the riches both of the knowledge and
wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past