"Impossible!" exclaimed Una, "you must have misunderstood him." 'He told me he was going to change his position, and that one person only shared the secret of his plans, and when I guessed your name he owned that it was you." A smile broke over Una's face like the dawn of a new day of life, for the clouds were dispersing now from her horizon, that had so long been veiled in gloom. "I can see how that mistake arose," she said, "and it's scarce a secret now. I am sure that I may tell you the truth. Mr. Trafford has accepted a colonial bishopric, and I knew that the offer of it had been made to him from Mr. Cuncliffe, whose large property lies in his future diocese, and who had reasons for not wishing the matter known for a time, and so he begged me not to mention it, and wished Mr. Trafford also to keep it secret." "And you are not going with him as his wife?" said Atherstone, almost unable still to realise the truth. "Oh no, he never dreamt of it, I am sure, and if he had, I could not- she paused and faltered, but Atherstone's eyes implored her to go on, and in a scarce audible whisper she added, “I could not have given him my love." "Oh, Una, was it-is it because your love was mine? Let there be no more concealments; no more mistakes between us; my whole life hangs upon your words; this is no moment for half truths or timid hesitations-speak-answer me plainly! Is your love mine?" Then, clearly but very softly, the sweet voice answered, "Yours only and always," and she let her hands fall into his clinging grasp, while it seemed to them both as if in that moment the gates of some earthly Eden had opened wide to welcome them, and they had entered in. After a little time of happiness, too great for words, Atherstone looked down on the face which was as bright now as it was sweet, with a loving smile. "My Una, I know now that you are mine, and that might well be enough for me without seeking to disturb the ashes of a miserable dead past, but I want to understand my happiness, I cannot endure that even the shadow of a former doubt should linger with Tell me, when you sent me Miss Amherst's letter so coldly, without a word, was it not because you understood from its contents that I had wilfully wronged my cousin, and you felt constrained in consequence to separate your life from miue?" me. tained, which I believed you did not know. It was only when Lilith Crichton's blessed death taught me that for a child of Christ it is happier far to die than to connive at evil or wrong of any kind, that I gathered courage to pierce my own heart by sending you such bitter tidings." "But why did you do it in such cruel fashion, darling, without one word of sympathy or kindness?" 66 "Because you had left me without a word," she answered, softly, and I thought perhaps you had left off loving me." "As if that were possible!" he answered, fondly stroking her pretty hair. "And I thought it still more," she whispered, "when you came back from Australia with all the perplexities and mysteries cleared up, having done justice to your uncle's son and won the world's esteem for your self-sacrifice, and still you never set foot within my home, and passed me like a stranger that miserable day when I saw you near the village, nor even so much as spoke to me when we met at the wedding." "Because I believed you to be Trafford's future wife," he said, "and I was cruelly wounded, Una, wounded to the very soul, for I had retained a lingering hope that I might regain you, although when I left England I did not feel that it would be honourable to ask any promise froin you in my uncertain position. I meant partially to have explained this to you, but you know how I was repelled from your house." "Oh yes; I shall never forget the misery of those days!" said Una, shivering at the recollection. "Well, it is all at an end now, thank Heaven!" said Atherstone; “and if we have both somewhat to repent of, my Una, we must try to make our future as fair and pure as I hope it will be bright." "Just when you came up," she said, pressing closer to him, "I was remembering how poor Miss Amherst told me to take warning by her fate, and ever to remember I had only one life to make either a blessing or a bane, and that I must take care I did not mar or waste it. At the time when she spoke to me thus, I was so self-confident, that I was resolved to make my whole existence blameless and useful, but I have failed, and fallen far even from my own undoubted standard of duty. Will you help me now, deer Humphrey, to spend the rest of my life in following steadily, so far as I can, in our Master's steps-the shining steps which the Light of the World left in their brightness to guide us still? for I have proved myself so weak that I must trust to you to lead me on aright." "We will help each other, darling," he answered, drawing her closer to him; "for I must tell you that I too have resolved to make my future existence very different from the past. As I stood by mỹ cousin's death-bed I determined that the rule of BY THE REV. B. P. POWER, M.A., AUTHOR OF "THE 'I WILLS' OF THE PSALMS," "THE FEET OF JESUS," ETC. III. "THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME." ROVERBS have pre-eminently to do with every-day life, with its experiences and maxims and rules; indeed, they have for the most part taken their rise from such experiences. But they are often grounded upon abstract truth, and would be equally valuable as statements of truth, even though they had no experiences to adduce as proof of their correctness. And so it comes to pass that in many cases they stretch away far beyond mere human things, into those which are Divine. The common proverb that "The longest way round is the shortest way home" has to do with the things of this world and the next. It is a daily life truth. And first of all let us inquire what the proverb means, and its place in common daily life. It means that what appears at first sight to be the best way to do a thing, oftentimes is not. There is something very desirable to be done-getting home-andwe are in a hurry to do it, as almost every man is to get home, and in our hurry we don't stop to think, but go ahead. It means, too, that the visible and apparent must be corrected, and oftentimes must be sacrificed to be corrected. What we see impresses us much more than what we can only reason about, and it is a great triumph of reason when we can forego under its power what is under our very eyes. It says, moreover, that many of the ends we have in view are not to be jumped at, and accomplished all in a moment, but that we must go through certain processes to attain to them, patiently, perseveringly, ploddingly, and human nature does not like that. Indeed, this particular proverb is one that is not generally believed-at least, not so practically believed as to be acted on. Certain phases of character take it in-cautious and perhaps somewhat phlegmatic people; but most people are too eager, too much on the surface, too impatient, to turn it to practical account. Now, how does this truth meet us in daily life? Here are two school-boys, who are being educated at the same school, who are intended for the same business, in the same mercantile house, and they are now engaged on the self-same task. Their present object is to get a sum done-until that sum is done they cannot go to play; and the worst of it is, it is a new rule, and the sun is shining provokingly, and altogether it would be delightful if only they could see their way to the end of it. "Now, Joe," cries one to the other, "I'll not stop at this all day!" And with a handful of marbles he bribes a boy in a higher form to do the sum; it is shown up, it is all right, and away in the sunshine runs Tom Jenkins, laughing at slow Joe as he plods along, dete mined, however, to work the matter out for himself. It is an hour after Tom's release that Joe finds himself honestly able to go out; but when he does get away it is with a light heart; he knows he has done his duty; he has ten times more enjoyment than his companion; he has the consciousness of duty fulfilled, of having been honest, of having a right to his play. Pass on four or five years. Many a trouble has Tom Jenkins had from that short cut he took with the sum. He has always to go bungling along from not perfectly understanding that rule; more than once he was kept in an hour for his arithmetic; and where will it end? Pass on ten years more, and at eight o'clock in the evening you see a poor clerk drudging away at a whole wilderness of figures; that is Tom, tried and found wanting, and doomed to remain a clerk to the end of his days; and at the very same hour you may see Mr. Joseph Burgon sitting at a meat-tea with his young wife, and telling her that his share of the profits this year as junior partner in the house of Burkit, Johnson, and Burgon, will be £900. It was a long way round that beautiful summer afternoon with that tough sum, but Joseph Burgon plodded all through it, and has come out well at the end. The road certainly does make a long round of it from Farmer Thompson's homestead to the market-town of Astonhope, and it is very provcking to have to cart produce some five miles, when by going across country the place can be reached by a lane only two miles long. But there are weighty reasons for that road, and weighty ones against that lane. The ground about Farmer Thompson's, though splendid for grazing, is rather boggy and marshy, and very undependable as to soundness of bottom, especially in the winter time. The engineer who made that road had no less than twenty men with him, poking and raking, to find the firmest bottom. No one knows all this better than Farmer Thompson's son William. He has been to Astonhope with a wagon-load of wheat, and, having gone round the regular road, has sped well. The wheat is sold, and Will has to bring back in the wagon the week's groceries, and a cask of beer, and a barrel of oil, and a sack of flour, and a new suit of clothes for his father; there is, moreover, a band-box containing a new bonnet for one Jenny Ray, who looks well in Will's eyes at all times, and who he thinks will look especially well in this bonnet. Jenny lives about half a mile from Will's house, on the short-cut road; and now he thinks the wagon is light, and he may venture across country, and by so doing he will have the advantage of delivering the bonnet and seeing Jenny a little sooner. Alas, he came to grief! With great care, and with many escapes, the young man got to pretty nearly opposite Jenny Ray's door; and even now he was not much the gainer in the way of time; for what with the time consumed in taking care, instead of going ahead, and in extricating himself from one rut and another, he might have been nearly home by this. But the worst has to come. Snap goes the axle, close to Jenny's house, as Will is driving the wagon through quite a pond of water. Down rolls Will in the mud; out comes Jenny to laugh at Will for the ridiculous plight he is in, and then to scold him for the loss of her bonnet. The ale is spilled, the oil floats out on the top of the black water, the wheat is soaked, the groceries are spoiled, the farmer's clothes are done for. It is a week from that very day that the remnants of the wagon are brought home; it is a fortnight before the vehicle is put together again; Jenny and Will never make up that day's falling out; and altogether it forms a very pretty illustration of the proverb that “The longest way round is the shortest way home." 9" Nothing is ever eventually gained by shirking, or ignoring truth. What is, is; and no hiding of ourselves from the truth, or of the truth from ourselves, will ever prevent its being otherwise. The longest way round is the longest way by perhaps one, two, or twenty miles, as the case may be, but it is the shortest in the end. In sailing to and from Australia, I had an example of this. Any one looking at our course on the map would have said we were going altogether out of our way; and it is true we sailed over a greater number of miles than was apparently necessary, but we gained many days in time; for we caught certain winds which were known to be found in certain latitudes, and sailed ten miles in an hour where we should not have sailed two on the short cut; and so we found the proverb true that, "The longest way round was the shortest way home." We must say "This is a long way round,' but it is one with a purpose, and I am travelling on it because I know it will be the quickest way of carrying out my design in the end." We must believe in the long and short of the matter, the long way round, and the short way. And if we do, see how it will act. A thorough belief in the truth of this proverb will make us patient. Patience is, in general, a necessary ingredient for success. An act of impatience will spoil whole months, or even years, of work. But we shall be patient if we are certain that we are on the right road; and that the end of the road, however round-about it may go, is the goal to which we want to attain. It will make us hopeful. A down-spirited man has little or no energy for his work, and if he sees no end to his toil, he is likely to faint by the way. But when we have an end to our labour practically, though not actually, in view, we shall be cheery; we know that "long looked-for" will "come at last;" the very energy which this will infuse into us will help us to get over the ground of the long round-about way, and bring us to our goal far sooner than we should have reached it had we plodded along without going to our work with a will. There will be ever so much more diligence too. No one cares to work for what has no end-to go round and round, like a horse in a mill. Let us say Home, homé-an end-on our way to it, and that the shortest way too;" and then we shall be a man to our work. C And now to look at the spiritual side of this proverb: we can see many points in which it is a true saying as regards the higher matters of our spiritual interest. The longest way round is with God very often the shortest way to accomplish His designs. All Nature is full of processes which are round-abouts. Let us take a short cut to open out à bud into a flower-a little picking and unfolding with our fingers, no matter how carefully done, will leave us nothing but the wreck and ruin of what might have been beautiful and perfect if only we had let it go through God's processes in God's way and God's time. See what a round-about way the child has to travel before he gets the strength or wisdom of a man; what a round-about way the fruit has come to be ripe and mellow passing through bud, and hard acidity, and hanging for many a day upon the wall apparently red and ripe but really hard and unfit for use. Winds and sun and time mellow it at last, by the processes of God. And so God is continually leading His people by what may seem to them long ways round; but they are ever with the view of bringing them most safely, most surely, and most quickly too, Home. "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou TWO-EDGED PROVERBS. shalt know hereafter," is the voice which we are now often called upon to hear, and to act upon in simple belief. God leads us in ways which we know not of, but He knows all about them; and if only we be sure that He is leading us by the hand, we may be sure that there can be no mistake. He knows where He is taking us to. He, who has made our home, knows where it is, and the best way to it; and there is no necessity for our knowing the path, if He does. We are often presumptuous in wanting to know too much, just as on the other hand we are often slothful in caring only to know too little; but God will not give an account of His matters; very often all He will say to us is: "That is the road I have appointed for thee; day by day travel patiently thereon." When we seem to be set providentially upon a path which we cannot understand, let us believe that it has a blessed ending, and that the God who has set us on it knows all the circumstances of the way. The child need not understand all about the road he is travelling if his father does; we need not know all about this dispensation and that, if our Father does. If we can fall back on a real knowledge of what God is, and of our connection with Him, we shall not be confounded by any intricacies of our road. When the time comes for a Christian to die, and he looks back upon the experiences of perhaps a long and chequered life, he will say: "He hath led me forth by the right way, that I might come to a city of habitation" (Ps. cvii. 7). Perhaps in eternity we shall see whither our own short cuts would have led us-how some of them terminated suddenly in the precipice or morass; how others would have fixed our feet in miry clay or cut them with pointed stones; how others had dwelling by their road-side enemies able either to allure or force us on to ruin. Then we shall see that the same God led us that led the Israelites of old, and with the same consideration and care. "And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt. But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea" (Exod. xiii. 17, 18). That was a long way round appointed in mercy, but there was another, lasting for forty years, which the Israelites brought upon themselves in judgment. Let us beware of bringing upon ourselves these "long ways round"-full of sorrow, even though manna be given to us to sustain our 829 acquisition of character and being made holy: Is there a long way round in these? Very often-so often as to warrant our saying generally there is. Characters are formed as fruits are developed and ripened-by processes. No doubt there are times when some great sorrow, or some extraordinary circumstances into which a man is thrown, seem to form his character at once; at least, to form it in some points which, under ordinary circumstances, might have taken a long time. But these are exceptional cases; in a general way, it is by many long ways round that character is formed. The patient man has had to bear many a long day's trial; the humble man has had to pass through many a humiliation; the heavenly-minded has had to go through many earth-weanings; the faithful man has had to grope in darkness for many days, when neither sun nor moon, nor stars appeared. Short cuts might have made surface characters, but the long way round has brought to heaven men fitted for eternity. Bearing this in mind, we may be very hopeful for ourselves, very hopeful for and patient with others. We are not deserted of the Spirit of God because we are not slaying every enemy at a stroke. The walls of Jericho were compassed once a day for six days, and on the seventh day, seven times; then, and not till then, was the long blast with the horn to be given; not till then were the people allowed to shout; but the long way round was the shortest way in the end, for then the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city (Josh. vi. 20). We are very apt to despond about ourselves or others, if we do not see quick progress; but even failures may be round-about ways to success, and though real in themselves, be only apparent as regards the great-result. We often rise from our failures far stronger than we were before; and they have done for us what no precept could have accomplished. Let this teach us patience with others, and with ourselves too. God is patient with us; then let us be patient with ourselves—not tolerant of evil, but patient and hopeful in our conflict with it. Everywhere we turn we are met with mystery— with the unknown; every day we see that it is not safe always to judge by the seeing of the eye, and the hearing of the ear. Let the One who has made our home for us, eternal in the heavens, be the One to guide us thither how He will. It is not for us to know the times, or seasons, or paths, which the Father keeps in His own power. Let us put our hand humbly but confidingly in His, assured that if He lead us so, even The longest And now as to God's dealing with us in our way round is the shortest way home." life. |