we
should not care if he seemed at times stern, as well as kind; we could
endure rebuke from him if we could only get from him wisdom to understand
the rebuke, and courage to bear the chastisement. Where is that
comforter? God answers: That Comforter am I, the God of Heaven and
Earth. There are comforters on earth who can help thee with wise words
and noble counsels, can be strong as man and tender as woman. But God
can be more strong than man, more tender than woman likewise; and when
the strong arm of man supports thee no longer, yet under thee are the
Everlasting Arms.

_All Saints-Day Sermons_.

. . . You are disappointed. Do remember if you lose heart about your
work, that none of it is _lost_. That the good of every good deed
remains, and breeds, and works on for ever; and that all that fails and
is lost is the outside shell of the thing, which perhaps might have been
better done, but better or worse has nothing to do with the real
spiritual good which you have done to men's hearts, for which God will
surely repay you in His own way and time.

_Letters and Memories_.

Don't be downhearted if outward humiliation, disappointment, failure,
come at first. If God be indeed our Father in any real sense, then whom
He loveth He chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.
And "till thou art emptied of thyself, God cannot fill thee," though it
be a law of the old Mystics, is true and practical common sense. Go thy
way, though the way to true light is a long ladder.

_Letters and Memories_.

As for any schemes of mine, it is a slight matter whether they have
failed or not. But the failure of a hundred schemes would not alter my
conviction that they are attempts in a right direction; and I will die in
hope, not having received the promises, but beholding them afar off, and
confessing myself a stranger and a pilgrim.

So I am content to have failed. I have learnt in the experiment
priceless truths concerning myself, my fellow-men, and the City of God,
which is eternal in the heavens, for ever coming down among men, and
actualizing itself more and more in every succeeding age.

_Letters and Memories_.

We have hope in Christ for the next life as well as for this--hope that
in the next life He will give us power to succeed where we failed here;
that He will enable us to be good and to do good, and, if not to make
others good (for there we trust all will be good together), to enjoy the
fulne