The Work That Is Done

The Cry Of Distress Lays Hold Of Our Lord's Omnipotence. It Is As Easy For God To Supply Thy Greatest As Thy Smallest Wants, Even As It Was Within His Power To Form A System Or An Atom, To Create A Blazing Sun As To Kindle The Fire-fly's Lamp.

It Is Not With A Rush And A Spring That We Are To Reach Christ's Character, And Attain To Perfect Saintship; But Step By Step, Foot By Foot, Hand Over Hand, We Are Slowly And Often Painfully To Mount The Ladder That Rests On Earth, And Rises To Heaven.

As In Nature, As In The Arts, So In Grace; It Is Rough Treatment That Gives Souls As Well As Stones Their Lustre; The More The Diamond Is Cut The Brighter It Sparkles; And In What Seems Hard Dealing, Their God Has No End In View But To Perfect His People's Graces. Our Father, And And Kindest Of Fathers, He Afflicts Not Willingly; He Sends Tribulations, But Hear St Paul Tell Their Purpose, - "tribulation Worketh Patience, And Patience Experience, And Experience Hope."

Perhaps God Does With His Heavenly Garden As We Do With Our Own. He May Chiefly Stock It From Nurseries, And Select For Transplanting What Is Yet In Its Young And Tender Age--flowers Before They Have Bloomed And Trees Ere They Begin To Bear.

The Hope Of Immortality Makes Heroes Of Cowards.