pass half of their lives half-asleep. And anybody that has ever come
through a great sorrow and can remember what deep fountains were
opened in his heart that he knew nothing about before, and how powers
that were all unsuspected by himself suddenly came to him, and how
life, instead of being a trivial succession of nothings, all at once
became significant and solemn--any man who can remember that, will
feel that if there were nothing else that his troubles did for him
than to shake him out of torpor and rouse him to a tension of
wholesome activity, so that he cried out:

'Call forth thy powers, my soul! and dare
The conflict of unequal war,'

he would have occasion to bless God for the roughest handling. The
tropics are very pleasant for lazy people, but they sap the
constitution and make work impossible; and after a man has lived for a
while in their perpetual summer, he begins to long for damp and mist
and frost and east winds which bring bracing to the system and make
him fit to work. God takes us often into very ungenial climates, and
the vindication of it is that we may be set to active service. That
was the first good thing that Sennacherib's coming did.

The next was that his invasion increased dependence upon God. You will
remember the story of the insolent taunts and vulgar vaunting by him
and his servants, and the one answer that was given: 'Hezekiah, the
king, and Isaiah the son of Amoz the prophet, prayed and cried to
God.' Ah! dear brethren, any thing that drives us to His breast is
blessing. We may call it evil when we speak from the point of view of
the foolish senses and the quivering heart, but if it blows us into
His arms, any wind, the roughest and the fiercest, is to be welcomed