adversity. There is a deep sense in which the joys of life are its ripened
sorrows.

_They that sow in tears.... He that goeth forth and weepeth._ These are not
the few who have been haunted by apparent failure, or beset with outwardly
painful conditions of service. They are not those who have walked in the
shadow of a lost leader, or toiled in the grey loneliness of a lost comrade
or of a brother proved untrue. For apparent failure, outward difficulty and
loneliness, often as we may have to face them, are, after all, only the
accidents of Godward toil. And if the bearer of seed for God's great
harvest should go forth to find no experience of these things, still, if he
is to do any real work in the fields of the Lord, he must go forth weeping.
He must sow in tears. Let a man be utterly faithful and sincere, let him
open his heart without reserve to the two great claims of the ideal and
sympathy, and he shall come to know that he has not found the hidden
meaning of daily service, nor learned how he can best perform that service,
until he has tasted the sorrow at the heart of it. The tears that are the
pledge of harvest are not called to the eyes by ridicule or opposition.
They are not the tears of disappointment, vexation, or impotence. They are
tears that dim the eyes of them that see visions, and gather in the heart
of them that dream dreams. To see the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ and the blindness of the world's heart to that glory; to see
unveiled the beauty that should be, and, unveiled too, the shame that is;
to have a spiritual nature that thrills at the touch of the perfect love
and life, and responds to every note of pain borne in upon it from the
murmurous trouble of the world,--this is to have inward fitness for the
high work of the Kingdom. Yes, and it is the pledge that this work shall be
done. There is such a thing as artistic grief. There is the vain and
languorous pity of aestheticism. Its robe of sympathy is wrapped about
itself and bejewelled with its own tears. And it never goes forth. You