the hopes He might rightly entertain about the success of His work were
dashed. Much of His love for those around Him was disappointed, and His
trust betrayed. He was despised where He should have been honoured:
rejected where He should have been received. "He came unto His own, and
His own received Him not." "Not this man," they cried, "but Barabbas." But
out of it all He came forth perfect and entire, lacking nothing--the
chiefest among ten thousand, the altogether lovely. It may be a mystery,
but it is a fact all the same, that the more the precious and wondrous and
eternal jewel was cut and cut again, the more the light and glory of the
Day-spring from on High was made manifest to men.

And here also I find a word of help and courage and cheer for you and me,
my precious comrade. I am not sure that you could receive any more
valuable Christmas gift than the full realisation of this truth--_that
your advance from the infancy to the manhood of your life in God will not
be hindered and delayed, but rather will be helped and quickened by the
storms and trials, the conflicts and sufferings, which will overtake
you_.

It was so with the man Christ Jesus; it has been so with thousands of His
chosen. As He, our dear Lord, was made perfect through suffering, so are
His saints. We are "chosen in the furnace of affliction," and often cast
into it, too! And yet He who chooses all our changes, might have spared us
every trial and conflict, and taken us to victory without a battle, and to
rest without a toil. But He knows better what will make us _men_, and
it is _men_ He wants to glorify Him--men, not babes.

The dark valleys of bitterness and loneliness are often better for us
than the land of Beulah. A certain queen, once sitting for her portrait,
commanded that it should be painted without shadows. "Without shadows!"