s; and those who, like
Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim horrors of the
cross,--who have lain, like him, cold and chilled in the hopeless
sepulchre,--if his spirit wakes them to life, shall come forth with
healing power for others who have suffered and are suffering.

Count the good and beautiful ministrations that have been wrought in
this world of need and labor, and how many of them have been wrought by
hands wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely ceased to bleed!

How many priests of consolation is God now ordaining by the fiery
imposition of sorrow! how many Sisters of the Bleeding Heart, Daughters
of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first vocation in
tears and blood!

The report of every battle strikes into some home; and heads fall low,
and hearts are shattered, and only God sees the joy that is set before
them, and that shall come out of their sorrow. He sees our morning at
the same moment that He sees our night,--sees us comforted, healed,
risen to a higher life, at the same moment that He sees us crushed and
broken in the dust; and so, though tenderer than we, He bears our great
sorrows for the joy that is set before us.

After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe, the country was, like
all countries after war, full of shattered households, of widows and
orphans and homeless wanderers. A nobleman of Silesia, the Baron von
Kottwitz, who had lost his wife and all his family in the reverses and
sorrows of the times, found himself alone in the world, which looked
more dreary and miserable through the multiplying lenses of his own
tears. But he was one of those whose heart had been quickened in its
death anguish by the resurrection voice of Christ; and he came forth to
life and comfort. He bravely resolved to do all that one man could to
lessen the great sum of misery. He sold his estates in Silesia, bought
in Berlin a large building that had been used as barracks for the
soldiers, and, fitting it up in plain commodious apartments, formed
there a great family-establishment, into which he received the wrecks
and fragments of families that had been broken up by the war,--orphan
children, widowed and helpless women, decrepit old people, disabled
soldiers. These he mad his family, and constituted himself their father
and chief. He above with them, and cared for them as a parent. He had
schools for the children; the more advanced he put to trades and
employments; he set u