even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate
towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns
from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into
one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the
moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments
in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other,
and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as
they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they
be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its
ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day
with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are
equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is
good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is
good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and
the ground be bound with frost.

And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember
and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may
be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as
the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has
brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell
quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his
eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is
true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is
good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean
more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made
empty if, as in the year when Israel's King died, we shall thereby have
our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.

'Take it on trust a little while,