God has revealed that the standard by which character is measured is patience, endurance. "Let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing."--James 1:4. If there were no harassments, no afflictions, no burdens, no sorrows, no disappointments, no sufferings, there could be no patience, endurance; and if there were no patience, no endurance, there could be no maturity and completeness of character. As to what trials are needed, and are best in each case, only God can decide. In our dimsightedness we think that many things are mistakes in God's plans, and that He cannot bring good out of them; but He will. A boy was born with a badly deformed foot. When he was eight years of age his father had two surgeons to operate and try to straighten the foot, but they failed. After a second operation, the foot was placed in a brace which was worn for months. But the foot remained as badly deformed as ever. The surgeons then informed the father that the foot could never be straightened. The father studied the deformed foot for many days, and then had a strange-looking box made with screws, felt taps and iron rods in different parts of it. He had the surgeons to operate again on the boy's foot, cutting the muscles and tendons in different places. The foot was then placed in the strange box; a screw was turned till the felt tap pressed against the foot at one place, almost breaking the bones; then another screw and felt tap were brought to bear on another deformed part of the foot, straightening the foot and almost breaking the bones in that part of the foot; then the iron rod was used to straighten another part. For months the boy's foot was kept in that box. The suffering, day and night for months, was indescribable. The child would weep for hours, the pain being all but unbearable; and when the father would come home the child would beg piteously for the box to be taken off and to be left a cripple. The father, mingling his tears with the tears of the suffering child, would turn the screws tighter than before, and the child would shriek in fearful agony. During those weeks and months of suffering he looked upon his father as being harsh and cruel and without love for him. Finally the father loosened all the screws and said, "Son, stand up," and for the first time in his life the boy stood erect. Often has that son, now a gray-haired man, stood over the grave of that father, long since dead, and bedewed the grave with his tears, and thanked God that he had a father who was true enough to continue the suffering until the terrible deformity was corrected. The father may have turned the screws one thread too much, but the Father in Heaven makes no mistakes, and far beyond the grave many of the redeemed will praise Him, when they understand, for the sufferings and afflictions and burdens they were led to endure here.