The gardener prunes the vine that it may bring forth more fruit. He cuts off useless branches that others may replace them, stronger and fresher; and the pruning is to be forgotten in the ripening clusters that are gathered in consequence of it. The gold is refined that the alloy may be disengaged from union with the precious metal; and when the latter is purified, its worth far exceeds the trial through which it had to pass. And who of us cannot glean from our own lives illustrations of a like character? Looking back through the mist of years, we can recall the failures that at the time nearly broke our hearts; losses that nearly crushed us, but which it now requires a positive effort to remember, so completely have they merged into the life for which Providence meant them to qualify us. Those gloomy days were meant to be forgotten. They were meant to merge into a nobler life. They were like the sharp pain of a surgeon's knife--the pain soon passes away, but the benefit of it remains. God never meant them to linger as phantoms in our memories, to absorb our thought and claim our sole attention. He meant them to make us patient, and stronger for other tasks, for the doing of which this discipline was required. We should be very careful, however, to drown our pains and sorrows not in selfish work and pleasures, but in Christian work and in the joys of Christian service. Let us use no intoxicating cup to cover with oblivion our troubles and cares. Some plunge even into actual dissipation that they may kill the sting of memory. Others resort to business and social pleasures. But then the forgetfulness is short-lived and bitter, and you truly add new causes for further regret in years to come. It is worth our while to forget our trials and sorrows, if we do so by becoming absorbed in better living and in Christian work. Go out of thyself and serve others. Forget thyself in thinking of thy fellow-men. Reach forth unto the things that are before thee. Help the unfortunate. Raise up the fallen. Teach the ignorant. Keep thy mind busy with useful thoughts. Give thy brain and hand to useful toil. Forget thy own pains and griefs in ministering to those which others have. It will then indeed be worth thy while to dismiss them from command of thee, for they will never be of so much use as when they thus stimulate kind and gentle deeds. It is thus that thou wilt "find in loss a gain to match," and rise on "stepping stones of your dead self to higher things."