nd welcome the blow and the pain!
Without them no mortal to heaven can attain;
For what can the sheaves on the barn floor avail
Till the thresher shall beat out the chaff with his flail?

'Tis only a moment God chastens with pain;
Joy follows on sorrow like sunshine on rain.
Then bear thou what God on thy spirit shall lay;
Be dumb; but, when tempted to murmur, then pray.

--From the German.

When thou hast thanked thy God for every blessing sent,
What time will then remain for murmurs or lament?

We must live through the weary winter
If we would value the spring;
And the woods must be cold and silent
Before the robins sing.
The flowers must lie buried in darkness
Before they can bud and bloom;
And the sweetest and warmest sunshine
Comes after the storm and gloom.

--Agnes L. Pratt.

We look along the shining ways,
To see the angel faces;
They come to us in darkest days
And in the blackest places.
The strongest hearts have strongest need,
To them the fiery trial;
Who walks a saint in word and deed
Is saint by self-denial.

Is it true, O Christ in heaven,
That the strongest suffer most,
That the wisest wander farthest,
And most hopelessly are lost?
That the mark of rank in nature
Is capacity for pain,
That the anguish of the singer
Makes the sweetness of the strain?

O, block by block, with sore and sharp endeavor,
Lifelong we build these human natures up
Into a temple fit for freedom's shrine.
And trial ever consecrates the cup
Wherefrom we pour her sacrificial wine.

--James Russell Lowell.

But all God's angels come to us disguised;
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after other lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the seraph's face beneath
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the front of God.

--James Russell Lowell.

The man whom God delights to bless
He never curses with success.
Thrice happy loss which makes me see
My happiness is all in thee.

--Charles Wesley.

Who ne'er has suffered, he has lived but half.
Who never failed, he never strove or sought.
Who never wept is stranger to a laugh
And he who never doubted never thought.

--J. B. Goode.

I thank thee