f on a very dark path. We must go. The flesh may shrink back,
but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying, "You must
go;" and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross,
and we have to traverse the desert and we are pounded and flailed of
misrepresentation and abuse, and we have to urge our way through ten
thousand obstacles that have been slain by our own right arm. We have
to ford the river, we have to climb the mountain, we have to storm the
castle; but, blessed be God, the day of rest and reward will come. On
the tip-top of the captured battlements we will shout the victory; if
not in this world, then in that world where there is no gall to drink,
no burdens to carry, no battles to fight. How do I know it? Know it! I
know it because God says so: "They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat,
for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to
living fountains of water, and God shall wipe all tears from their
eyes."

It was very hard for Noah to endure the scoffing of the people in his
day, while he was trying to build the ark, and was every morning
quizzed about his old boat that would never be of any practical use;
but when the deluge came, and the tops of the mountains disappeared
like the backs of sea-monsters, and the elements, lashed up in fury,
clapped their hands over a drowned world, then Noah in the ark
rejoiced in his own safety and in the safety of his family, and looked
out on the wreck of a ruined earth.

Christ, hounded of persecutors, denied a pillow, worse maltreated than
the thieves on either side of the cross, human hate smacking its lips
in satisfaction after it had been draining His last drop of blood, the
sheeted dead bursting from the sepulchers at His crucifixion. Tell me,
O Gethsemane and Golgotha! were there ever darker times than those?
Like the booming of the midnight sea against the rock, the surges of
Christ's anguish beat against the gates of eternity, to be echoed back
by all the thrones of heaven and all the dungeons of hell. But the day
of reward comes for Christ; all the pomp and dominion of this world
are to be hung on His throne, uncrowned heads are to bow before Him on
whose head are many crowns, and all the celestial worship is to come
up at His feet, like the humming of the forest, like the rushing of
the waters, like the thundering of the seas, while all heaven, rising
on t