The valley of Trouble is perhaps the last place in the world where the uninstructed would look for any fruit of harvest, and yet again and again men have brought the fairest flowers of character and holiness out of it. How many a devout and useful servant of Christ owes the beginning of his allegiance to a serious illness, to some crippling disappointment, to an overwhelming sorrow? In all humility there are many who can say, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, and there are many, many more about whom their friends often quote that text. "I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. "I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne’er a word said she, But oh, the things I learned from her, When Sorrow walked with me!" There is a door of Hope even in the valley of Trouble, and those who tread it in God’s company shall not fail to find it. There is one other class who need to know that even in Achor there is a door of hope, the depressed and discouraged. Phillips Brooks once declared, "I came near doing a dreadful thing the other day. I was in East Boston and I suddenly felt as if I must get away from everything for a while. I went to the Cunard dock and asked if the steamer had sailed. She had been gone about an hour. I believe if she had still been there, I should have absconded." I wonder if there is any one who has not known that feeling? When duty is dull, and circumstances discouraging, when we seem to be merely ploughing the sands, "Oh," we say, "for the wings of a dove!" Comfort and happiness and salvation seem to lie solely in escape. And it may be that they do. But more often the trouble is in ourselves, and would travel with us to the new post. If there be any depressed or discouraged reading these lines, I should like to remind them of God’s promise to give the valley of Achor--that is the depressing scene of your labours, my brother--for a door of hope. You are looking for your hope somewhere else, anywhere else provided it be out of your present rut and drudgery. In reality your door of hope lies in the rut, in the valley itself. It is not escape you need. It is just a braver faith that God is in your valley with you, and that He needs you there. Take a firmer grip of that, and go back to where you serve, and you will find, please God, that even in your valley He has opened for you a door of Hope and Gladness. May all those who are living and working these days in the valley of Achor find in it somewhere God’s Door of Hope. PRAYER