Christ. It is true, and you will find it true, when years hence you look
back, as I trust you all will, calmly and intelligently, on the events of
your own lives--you will find, I say, that the very events in your lives
which seemed at the time most trying, most vexing, most disastrous, have
been those which wore most necessary for you, to call out what was good
in you, and to purge out what was bad; that by those very troubles your
Lord, who knows the value of suffering, because He has suffered Himself,
was making true men, true women of you; hardening your heads, while He
softened your hearts; teaching you to obey Him, while He taught you not
to obey your own fancies and your own passions; refining and tempering
your characters in the furnace of trial, as the smith refines soft iron
into trusty steel; teaching you, as the great poet says--


"That life is not as idle ore,
But heated hot with burning fears,
And bathed in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the strokes of doom,
To shape and use."


Yes, you will learn that, and more than that, and say in peace--"Before I
was troubled I went wrong, but now have I kept thy commandments." And to
such an old age may our Lord Jesus Christ bring you and me and all we
love. Amen.



SERMON XLI. SACRIFICE TO CAESAR OR TO GOD