house to develop James Renwick, and Andrew Melville, and Hugh
McKail, the glorious martyrs of Scotch history. It took the stormy
sea, and the December blast, and the desolate New England coast, and
the war-whoop of savages, to show forth the prowess of the Pilgrim
Fathers--

"When amid the storms they sung,
And the stars heard, and the sea,
And the sounding aisles of the dim wood
Rang to the anthems of the free."

It took all our past national distresses, and it takes all our present
national sorrows, to lift up our nation on that high career where it
will march along after the foreign aristocracies that have mocked and
the tyrannies that have jeered, shall be swept down under the
omnipotent wrath of God, who hates despotism, and who, by the strength
of His own red right arm, will make all men free. And so it is
individually, and in the family, and in the Church, and in the world,
that through darkness and storm and trouble men, women, churches,
nations, are developed.

II. Again, I see in my text the beauty of unfaltering friendship. I
suppose there were plenty of friends for Naomi while she was in
prosperity; but of all her acquaintances, how many were willing to
trudge off with her toward Judah, when she had to make that lonely
journey? One--the heroine of my text. One--absolutely one. I suppose
when Naomi's husband was living, and they had plenty of money, and all
things went well, they had a great many callers; but I suppose that
after her husband died, and her property went, and she got old and
poor, she was not troubled very much with callers. All the birds that
sung in the bower while the sun shone have gone to their nests, now
the night has fallen.

Oh, these beautiful sun-flowers that spread out their color in the
morning hour! but they are always asleep when the sun is going down!
Job had plenty of friends when he was the richest man in Uz; but when
his property went and the trials came, then there were none so much
that pestered as Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite.

Life often seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pulls
down all the other men into his own lap. Let suspicions arise about a
man's character, and he becomes like a bank in a panic, and all the
imputations rush on him and break down in a day that character which
in due time would have had strength to defend itself. There are
reputations that have been half a century