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know and we do not know: we have to bear the clouds and darkness, though the love revealed shines in our hearts.
Brethren, I have thought that I might rightly remind you of all this to-day, when one thought fills every heart. I do not seem to-day, in Christ Church, as a Christ Church man to Christ Church men, to be addressing a public congregation, but rather to be speaking to a family and household in grief. You had been so drawn together by the quiet spell of gracious influence that now the sorrow at the centre of your common life is felt, I believe, with real and aching pain throughout it by seniors and juniors, residents and non-residents, the servants as well as the members of the House. Such heightening and quickening of college feeling is a rare thing; but it is true here, and it is eloquent of its own cause. And out of the sincerity of that grief and sympathy there springs—is it not so?—the sad, perplexed thought, the almost angry, bitter question, To what purpose is this waste? Does God care? It is best to deal quietly and firmly with such thoughts, to remind ourselves that there is, indeed, in them no reason or truth. They really demand that the ways of God should be clear at every step to the wit of us, the atom-creatures of His hand, and we know and own that to ask this is only foolish. The clouds and darkness must be
