y."
In all the good that comes of this anguish you shall have a right and
share by virtue of this sacrifice. The joy of freedmen bursting from
chains, the glory of a nation new-born, the assurance of a triumphant
future for your country and the world,--all these become yours by the
purchase-money of that precious blood.

Besides this, there are other treasures that come through sorrow, and
sorrow alone. There are celestial plants of root so long and so deep
that the land must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the very
foundation, before they can strike and nourish; and when we see how
God's plough is driving backward and forward and across this nation,
rending, tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers, we
ask ourselves, What is He going to plant?

Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground has been broken
up, does the purpose of the husbandman appear. At first we see only
what is uprooted and ploughed in,--the daisy drabbled, and the violet
crushed,--and the first trees planted amid the unsightly furrows stand
dumb and disconsolate, irresolute in leaf, and without flower or
fruit. Their work is under the ground. In darkness and silence they
are putting forth long fibres, searching hither and thither under the
black soil for the strength that years hence shall burst into bloom
and bearing.

What is true of nations is true of individuals. It may seem now winter
and desolation with you. Your hearts have been ploughed and harrowed
and are now frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a blade of
grass, not a bird to sing,--and it is hard to believe that any
brighter flowers, any greener herbage, shall spring up than those
which have been torn away; and yet there will. Nature herself teaches
you to-day. Outdoors nothing but bare branches and shrouding snow; and
yet you know that there is not a tree that is not patiently holding
out at the end of its boughs next year's buds, frozen indeed, but
unkilled. The rhododendron and the lilac have their blossoms all
ready, wrapped in cere-cloth, waiting in patient faith. Under the
frozen ground the crocus and the hyacinth and the tulip hide in their
hearts the perfect forms of future flowers. And it is even so with
you: your leaf buds of the future are frozen, but not killed; the soil
of your heart has many flowers under it cold and still now, but they
will yet come up and bloom.

The dear old book of comfort tells of no present healing for sorrow.