took that point of view in regard to all the changes of this
changeful life, we should not so often be bewildered and upset by the
darkest of our sorrows. The shining lancets and cruel cutting
instruments that the surgeon lays out on his table before he begins
the operation are very dreadful. But the way to think of them is that
they are there in order to remove from a man what it does him harm to
keep, and what, if it is not taken away, will kill him. So life, with
its troubles, great and small, is all meant for this, to make us
surer of, and bring us closer to, our God, and to brace and
strengthen us in our own personal character. And if it does that,
then blessed be everything that produces these results, and leads us
thereby to glorying in the troubles by which shines out on us a
brighter hope.

So there are the two sources, you see: the one is the blessedness of
the Christian life, the other the sorrows of the outward life, and
both may converge upon the brightening of our Christian hope. Our
rainbow is the child of the marriage of the sun and the rain. The
Christian hope comes from being 'justified by faith, having peace
with God ... and access into grace,' and it comes from tribulation,
which 'worketh patience,' and patience which 'worketh approval.' The
one spark is struck from the hard flint by the cold steel, and the
other is kindled by the sun itself, but they are both fire.

And so, lastly, we have here--

III. The one emotion with which the Christian should front all the
facts, inward and outward, of his earthly life.

'We glory in the hope,' 'we glory in tribulation,' I need not dwell