ist, and Ruth the better daughter-in-law.

I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor, who was a very
brilliant man, "Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems
to have so little heart and tenderness in his sermons?" "Well," he
replied, "the reason is, our pastor has never had any trouble. When
misfortune comes upon him, his style will be different." After awhile
the Lord took a child out of that pastor's house; and though the
preacher was just as brilliant as he was before, oh, the warmth, the
tenderness of his discourses! The fact is, that trouble is a great
educator. You see sometimes a musician sit down at an instrument, and
his execution is cold and formal and unfeeling. The reason is that all
his life he has been prospered. But let misfortune or bereavement come
to that man, and he sits down at the instrument, and you discover the
pathos in the first sweep of the keys.

Misfortune and trials are great educators. A young doctor comes into a
sick-room where there is a dying child. Perhaps he is very rough in
his prescription, and very rough in his manner, and rough in the
feeling of the pulse, and rough in his answer to the mother's anxious
question; but years roll on, and there has been one dead in his own
house; and now he comes into the sick-room, and with tearful eye he
looks at the dying child, and he says, "Oh, how this reminds me of my
Charlie!" Trouble, the great educator. Sorrow--I see its touch in the
grandest painting; I hear its tremor in the sweetest song; I feel its
power in the mightiest argument.

Grecian mythology said that the fountain of Hippocrene was struck out
by the foot of the winged horse Pegasus. I have often noticed in life
that the brightest and most beautiful fountains of Christian comfort
and spiritual life have been struck out by the iron-shod hoof of
disaster and calamity. I see Daniel's courage best by the flash of
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace. I see Paul's prowess best when I find him on
the foundering ship under the glare of the lightning in the breakers
of Melita. God crowns His children amid the howling of wild beasts and
the chopping of blood-splashed guillotine and the crackling fires of
martyrdom. It took the persecutions of Marcus Aurelius to develop
Polycarp and Justin Martyr. It took the pope's bull and the cardinal's
curse and the world's anathema to develop Martin Luther. It took all
the hostilities against the Scotch Covenanters and the fury of Lord
Claver