"Sooner or later," he said, "God will put every soul into the crucible of affliction. Sooner or later we shall all be passing through scenes like that of the family at Bethany. We may not hope to escape. God means we shall not. As Christ firmly, while seeing all, left events at Bethany to their designed course, so He will as surely and steadily carry out the discipline which He, as the unerring physician of the soul, sees that each one of us requires. Does the refiner hesitate to put the crude ore into the crucible? Does the sculptor shrink from chiselling the shapeless block into beauty? Does not the surgeon, with nerves of steel and pulse unquickened, cut near the very vitals of his agonized patient? He sees that it is necessary, in order to save from greater evil, and therefore he is as remorseless as fate. If to cure some transient, physical infirmity, man is justified in inflicting--nay, more, is compelled to inflict--so much suffering upon his fellow-creatures, how much more is God justified in His severest moral discipline, which has as its object our eternal health. Though we shrink from the sorrow, though we writhe under the pain, though our hearts break a thousand times, He will not waver in His calm, steadfast purpose. He sees eternity; the present is as nothing to Him. He will break our grasp from all earthly idols, even though He tear our bleeding hearts asunder. If we are trusting in aught save Him, that upon which we are leaning will be snatched away, even though we fall at first into the depths of despairing sorrow. What He makes us suffer now is not to be considered, in view of His purpose to wean us from this world and prepare us for the next. Christ, as we learn from our text, is as inflexible as fate, and does not hesitate to secure the needful faith by remaining away, even though the message of the sisters was an entreaty in itself. Nay, more, he distinctly declares to his disciples, 'I am glad, for your sakes, that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.'