Therefore, in retrospect, exiles, prisoners, martyrs, who have
believed in God seem fortunate. The endungeoned heroes often seem the
children of careful good fortune and happiness. The saints, walking
through the fire, stand forth as those who are dear unto God. How the
point of view changes events. Kitto was deaf, and in his youth his
deafness broke his heart, but because his ears were closed to the
din of life, he became the great scholar of his time, and swept the
treasures of the world into a single volume, an armory of intellectual
weapons. Fawcett was blind, but through that blindness became a great
analytic student, a master of organization, and served all England in
her commerce. John Bright was broken-hearted, standing above the bier,
but Richard Cobden called him from his sorrow to become a voice for
the poor, to plead the cause of the opprest, and bring about the Corn
Laws for the hungry workers in the factories and shops. Comfort ye,
comfort ye, my people.

Let the exile say unto himself: "Your warfare is accomplished; your
iniquity is pardoned; the Lord's hand will give unto thee double for
all thy sins that are forgiven." The great faiths and convictions of
the prophets and law-givers, your language and your laws and your
liberties, have not been destroyed by captivity; rather slavery
has saved them. At last you know their value; in contrast with the
idolatry of the Euphrates, the jargon of tongues, the inequality of
rights, the organization of justice and oppression, how wonderful the
equity of the laws of Moses! How beautiful the faith of the fathers!
How surely founded the laws of God. Henceforth idolatry, injustice and
sin became as monstrous in their ugliness as they were wicked in their
essence. Everything else might go, but not the faith of the fathers.
Persecution was like fire on the vase; it burned the colors in. Little