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Black Days.
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black days, we must valiantly take up arms ourselves to war against the invisible enemy. If, in the midst of the labor that is proving futile—the duty that we are illy performing—the annoyances that are goading us with needles, we could only be induced to pause and ponder, and look our own mood steadily in the face, we might gain a speedy victory over a host of these Liliputian tormentors.

A state of gloom is always an unthankful, ungodly state. Sometimes it is produced by some physical derangement; sometimes it springs out of some hidden discontent, some haunting disappointment, some foreboding of menacing misfortune, and sometimes it is untraceable to any source. If its origin be physical, is it not incumbent upon us to use every attainable means to restore the health of the body, that the sanitary tone of the mind may return? If discontent or disappointment have thrown this sable pall over the spirit, will it not be lifted by the remembrance that all events in life are Heaven-ordered, and no apparent failure or sorrow is permitted that cannot become an instrument of spiritual advancement? If the black day's heaviness proceed from some threatening evil, will it not be dispelled by the reflection that it is folly to suffer in anticipation the anguish of an affliction which we may possibly be spared? If the incapacitating depression have no traceable origin, will not the dusky phantom van-

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