ss and
severity in Christ was really truest and wisest friendship. One
writes:--

"If you could go back to the forks of the road--
Back the long miles you have carried the load;
Back to the place where you had to decide
By this way or that through your life to abide;

Back of the sorrow and back of the care;
Back to the place where the future was fair--
If you were there now, a decision to make,
Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?

Then, after you'd trodden the other long track,
Suppose that again to the forks you went back,
After you found that its promises fair
Were but a delusion that led to a snare--

That the road you first travelled with sighs and unrest,
Though dreary and rough, was most graciously blest,
With a balm for each bruise and a charm for each ache,
Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?"

Sometimes good people are disappointed in the way their prayers are
answered. Indeed, they seem not to be answered at all. They ask God
to take away some trouble, to lift off some load, and their request is
not granted. They continue to pray, for they read that we must be
importunate, that men ought always to pray and not to faint; but still
there seems no answer. Then they are perplexed. They cannot
understand why God's promises have failed.

But they have only misread the promises. There is no assurance given
that the burdens shall be lifted off and carried for us. God would not
be the wise, good, and loving Father he is, if at every cry of any of
his children he ran to take away the trouble, or free them from the
hardness, or make all things easy and pleasant for them. Such a course
would keep us always children, untrained, undisciplined. Only in
burden-bearing and in enduring can we learn to be self-reliant and
strong. Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, and in life's
actual experiences of trial. He learned obedience by the things that
he suffered. It was by meeting temptation and by being victorious in
it that he became Master of the world, able to deliver us in all our
temptations.

Not otherwise can we grow into Christlike men. It would be unkindness
in our Father to save us from the experiences by which alone we can be
disciplined into robust and vigorous strength. The promises do not
read that if we call upon God in our trouble he will take the trouble
away. Rather the assurance is that if we call upon God he will