den, and can be gotten only by lifting the
burden. Self must die if the good in us is to live and shine out in
radiance. Michael Angelo used to say, as the chippings flew thick from
the marble on the floor of his studio, "While the marble wastes, the
image grows." There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away
continually of things that are dear to nature, if the things that are
true, and just, and honorable, and pure, and lovely, are to come out in
the life. The marble must waste while the image grows.

Then take suffering. Here, too, the same law prevails. Every one
suffers. Said Augustine, "God had one Son without sin; he has none
without sorrow." From infancy's first cry until the old man's life
goes out in a gasp of pain, suffering is a condition of existence. It
comes in manifold forms. Now it is in sickness; the body is racked
with pain or burns in fever. Ofttimes sickness is a heavy burden. Yet
even this burden has a blessing in it for the Christian. Sickness
rightly borne makes us better. It unbinds the world's fetters. It
purifies the heart. It sobers the spirit. It turns the eyes
heavenward. It strips off much of the illusion of life and uncovers
its better realities. Sickness in a home of faith, prayer, and love,
softens all the household hearts, makes sympathy deeper, draws all the
family closer together.

Trouble comes in many other forms. It may be a bitter disappointment
which falls upon a young life when love has not been true, or when
character has proved unworthy, turning the fair blossoms of hope to
dead leaves under the feet. There are lives that bear the pain and
carry the hidden memorials of such a grief through long years, making
them sad at heart even when walking in sweetest sunshine.

Or it may be the failure of some other hope, as when one has followed a
bright dream of ambition for days and years, finding it only a dream.
Or it may be the keener, more bitter grief which comes to one when a
friend--a child, a brother or sister, a husband or wife--does badly.
In such a case even the divine comfort cannot heal the heart's hurt;
love cannot but suffer, and there is no hand that can lessen the pang.
The anguish which love endures for others' sins is among the saddest of
earth's sorrows.

There are griefs that hang no crape on the door-bell, that wear no
black garments, that close no shutters, that drop no tears which men
can see, that can get no sympathy save that of th