A GOOD MAN'S PERPLEXITIES IN VIEW OF THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE.

(By Benjamin D. Thomas, D. D., Toronto, Canada.)

"I have heard, but understand not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? . . . Go thou this way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot in the end of the days." - Dan. 12:8,13.

We learn from this Scripture:

1. That the history of humanity is full of perplexities even to the good man.

Daniel felt it in this instance. David felt it. Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all prophets felt it. No thoughtful soul has ever lived but has felt it. We seem to be standing beside this seer of a bygone age, looking into the same darkness, disturbed by the same mysterious, agonized by the same apprehensions. Life is full of anomalies and contradiction.

II. That even the good man must be satisfied to leave many of the problems that fill him with perplexity unsolved.

He cannot successfully grapple with them. They are immeasurably beyond his capacity. His relationship to God will serve to give him a better standard of judgment, will quicken thought, and enlarge the hemisphere of vision, but it will not serve to lift him out of his perplexities. He may be at rest because he knows that God is on the throne, but it will be the rest of faith, not of sight.

III. That the perplexities which present themselves in life must not be allowed to interfere with the good man's fulfillment of his duties and responsibilities.

"Go thou thy way till the end be." Your supreme business is not to know, but to do. It is not for the workmen who are engaged in the construction of a magnificent pile which is to be the wonder and admiration of the age to have a clear knowledge of the architectural ideal. All they need to know is how to use the tools that have been placed in their hands; all they need be anxious about is the particular piece of wall given them to build. They labor necessarily in the dark. All they need be assured of is that they are working under the guidance and inspiration of the great Master-Builder. Be true, be honest, be diligent, be faithful, fill the particular position into which Providence hath introduced you as well as it can be filled by the grace of God and the great Architect under whose superintendence the vast structure is being upreared will take care of the congruities and harmonies. Do not agitate yourself with questions which are beyond your capacity to understand. Do not permit the inexplicable and the perplexing in human phenomena to disquiet you. Do not obtrude into the domain of the Infinite. "Go thou thy way." Do thou thy work. Discharge thou with fidelity thy duty in the sphere into which Providence hath introduced thee. The mysteries and the incongruities, the anomalies and the perplexities, are not for thee to decipher and understand. "Go thou thy way till the end be."

IV. That there will be a period in the future when all that now perplexes the good man will be seen not to have been out of harmony with his best interests.

"For thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." There is a momentous crisis toward which the whole of life is tending. Righteousness must be vindicated. The dark, mysterious, inexplicable, must be seen to have the light of an infinite beneficence flashing through them. If not, what is there to hope for? Then God is not a God of justice. Then the Bible has been luring us with. incentives only to culminate in anarchy and despair. As God liveth there must be a judgment, there must be a period in which wrong shall be righted, in which the false shall be uncovered and the true approved, in which the purpose of God shall shine forth commanding universal admiration, in which infinite love shall be seen to have been ever operant in the affairs of the universe. It must be so, else the whole scheme of life is in explicable and unutterably unjust.

When the great consummation shall come —.

(1.) The good man shall rest — no more shall there be experienced aught to disturb, to agitate, to perplex.

(2.) The good man shall stand in his lot — his character and circumstances will correspond. The good man's "lot and the end of days" will be worthy of the great Lord to whose grace he owes it.

The time is coming when the good man shall be lifted above all his perplexities, when he shall understand why he could not understand, and see why he could not see, and know what was aforetime unknowable.