wrong place for
the sweetness and joy. Jesus is our example, and we can expect trials to
have the same effect upon us as they had upon him. In that dark hour of
trial in Gethsemane, with the heavy weight of the cross already upon his
spirit, did he say to his disciples, "Behold, how joyful I am in such
awful circumstances"? Ah, no! his state was very different, and we hear
him say, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." He was "a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief." When he hung upon the cross, he
cried out in agony, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Do you
think there was joy or sweetness in that? Such feelings had no place in
his emotions that day. But there was joy connected with these trials. We
read that "for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross"
(Heb. 12: 2). Here we have endurance and joy, but we do not find them
together: the endurance is present; the joy is "set before him." This is
the order in which such things come to us. Christ's joy came, not from his
sufferings, but from the result of these sufferings. His joy is in the
redeemed souls that have been saved through his sufferings.

Our own trials will of necessity mean suffering, and there can be little
joy in suffering. Joy never has its direct origin in suffering; but it
does often come out of suffering, or as a result of enduring suffering.
The order in which it works is clearly seen in Heb. 12: 11--"Now no
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous:
nevertheless _afterward_ it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness." This is what you may expect--grievousness in time of trial
and chastening, and afterward the reaping of joy. The Bible speaks of our
being "in heaviness through manifold temptations," and also says, "We
count them happy which endure." Enduring implies suffering; and suffering,
of itself, can never be joyful. We might, in a figure, say that suffering
is the soil in which the tree of patient endurance grows, and that joy is
the ripened fruit of the tree.

There are many different kinds of trials, and they have different effects.
Sometimes they are like a great storm that sweeps over the soul, when the
dashing rain obscures all view of the distant landscape and its beauties,
when the howling of the wind, the flashing of the lightning, and the
rolling of the thunder shuts out everything else and holds our entire
attention. It is only when the storm is over and the calm has