132 the heart's-ease. 



them away and give entrance to the sunbeams. 

 Often, very often, has D. expatiated on the same 

 sweet truth, representing the many ways in which 

 my abounding trials were working together for good, 

 already perceptible. I remember the lesson, and 

 cherish it in my heart ; but sorely do I miss the 

 cheerful look, the encouraging smile, that were 

 wont to accompany it. D. was utterly incapable 

 of that cheap generosity which bestows on the 

 sufferer a scrap of advice, perchance a text of 

 scripture, and thinks it has done the part of a 

 Christian comforter. He first placed himself so 

 fully in the situation of the person afflicted, by the 

 exercise of that beautiful consideration wherewith 

 God had gifted him ; and made so many allowances 

 for the peculiarity of individual feeling and circum 

 stances, that his language assumed rather the cha- 

 racter of consoling thoughts, inwardly suggested 

 to the mourner, than of another man's ideas, ver- 

 bally communicated. Surely if there be one gift 

 more to be coveted than another, in the social in- 

 tercourse of poor pilgrims through a valley of Baca, 

 it is this. It is easy to lecture a complaining 

 brother: it is easy to shew him how light! y you 

 regard his present affliction ; and thus to silence 

 the rising murmer, bidding it retire and rankle in 

 the heart which knoweth its own bitterness ; but 

 oh, how wise, how tender, how Christ-like, is the 

 love that voluntarily places itself under his cross. 



