THE WINGS OF THE WIND.

cowardly desertion of the post to which God had sent him, with the suggestive words, "What! thou here, Elijah?" (which is more exactly the original,) a mighty wind was sent to rend the mountains, and make way for the still small voice. And when another prophet was to be punished for the like disobedience, "the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken." And might we not point to more modern times, when great winds raged, and purposes of good were so eminently subserved thereby, that we may be justified in calling them "winds from the Lord ?" Who shall doubt but the inscription on Queen Elizabeth's medal for the destruction of the Spanish Armada-Afflavit Deus, et dissipantur-was an emphatic truth? "It blows a fearful tempest," writes Dr. Hamilton, "and sets some rheumatic joints aching; but the morrow shows dashed in pieces the awful armada, which was fetching the Inquisition to our British Isle!" And, further, he instances the wind that kept James the Second's ships in harbour, while wafting William's to Torbay, freighted with civil and religious liberty for generations to come.

I have read a story of a poor German widow, who lived during the troublous times of Napoleon's Continental wars. Through all the terrors of those years her prayer was that "the Lord would be a wall to her and her household:" and once, that the Cossacks were coming to plunder the town, she did especially beseech her God in these words. In the disquiet of his heart her son said it was a senseless prayer; he did not see how the Lord could answer it that night, when the pitiless Russian marauders were coming, and his mother's cottage, being just outside the town, must be the very first scene of their outrages. The poor woman held firm to her trust; and so it came to pass that a strong wind arose, which all night bore to their ears shots and cries from the town, while no evil came near them. In the morning they looked out, and, lo! a great mass of snow, higher than their chimneys, had been drifted by the wind between them and the public road, concealing and sheltering them as with a wall. Did not the God who heareth prayer send forth that wind out of his treasuries, bearing upon its wings a defence for his servant?

Hence, because we know not what purposes the Most High is fulfilling by their means, we should never grumble at God's winds. That from the east is sharp and bitter, and thrills every nerve of your weakened frame; but to another it is vigour and health, and to many a fleet of ships it is the joyful signal of speedy voyage. "While the valetudinarian is looking at the vane, the wind is careering over a

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continent, and doing the Creator's work in a hundred lands. It has called at yon city, fetid with fever, and groaning with pestilence, and with its besom of brisk pinions has swept the plague away. It has found the harvest arrested in a broad and fertile realm, the earth chapped and the drops withering, and is now hurrying with that black armament of clouds to drench it into lifesome irrigation." It is well to be of the mind of that old shepherd, who said, when asked what weather he liked best, "Whatever weather the Lord is pleased to send."

Perhaps no greater proof was given by Jesus Christ of his being co-equal with the Father, as touching his Godhead, than the miracle by which he calmed the raging wind with a word. So distinctly was this felt to be the achievement of a God, that it produced the greatest wonder among all witnesses. "He that createth the wind, and declareth to man what is his thought," was present with them in the veil of mortal flesh. And as a symbol of his great operations in the soul of man, he used the same wind, which "bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The symbol was substantiated when upon the upper chamber of Jerusalem came the "rushing mighty wind," embodying the tongues of fire, and inaugurated that blessed dispensation of Gospel preaching to which we owe our light and our salvation.

Old Bishop Hopkins has some striking remarks concerning this same preaching of the word. When God first created man, it is said that he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; but when God new-creates a man, he breathes into his ears; this is the word that raiseth the dead. And though wicked and profane men scoff at preaching, and count all ministers' words, and God's words too, but so much wind, yet are they such wind, believe it, as is able to tear rocks and rend mountains; such winds as, if they are ever saved, must shake and overturn the foundations of all their carnal confidence and presumption." Those who have felt this mighty spiritual power, know how aptly it is represented by the wind; sometimes breathing gently as an infant's sigh, but irresistibly rousing up every faculty of the soul into that new wakefulness which, with God's blessing, is eternal; sometimes descending like a tornado, and seizing the heart and buffeting the spirit with terrors of law and of justice, until the still small voice, surely coming after, speaketh celestial peace.

Various allusions in the sacred volume are made to the peculiar winds of the countries where it was written; for the natural is, here