gladness of hearts filled with God; and every grief that stoops upon
our path may be, and will be, if we keep near that dear Lord, changed
into its own opposite, and become the source of blessedness else
unattainable. Every stroke of the bright, sharp ploughshare that goes
through the fallow ground, and every dark winter's day of pulverising
frost and lashing tempest and howling wind, are represented in the
broad acres, waving with the golden grain. All your griefs and mine,
brother, if we carry them to the Master, will flash up into gladness
and be "turned into joy."

II. Still further, another aspect here of the glad life of the true
Christian is, that it is a joy founded upon the consciousness that
Christ's eye is upon us.

'I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice.' In other parts
of these closing discourses the form of the promise is the converse
of this, as for instance--'Yet a little while, and ye shall see
_Me_.' Here Christ lays hold of the thought by the other handle, and
says, '_I_ will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.' Now
these two forms of putting the same mutual relationship, of course,
agree, in that they both of them suggest, as the true foundation of
the blessedness which they promise, the fact of communion with a
present Lord. But they differ from one another in colouring, and in
the emphasis which they place upon the two parts of that communion.
'_Ye_ shall see _Me_' fixes attention upon us and our perception of
Him. '_I_ will see you' fixes attention rather upon Him and His
beholding of us. 'Ye shall see Me' speaks of our going out after Him
and being satisfied in Him. 'I will see you' speaks of His perfect
knowledge, of His loving care, of His tender, compassionate,
complacent, ever-watchful eye resting upon us, in order that He may