There is no need to try to solve that old, yet always new, question of human hearts, "Why does God permit so much suffering in his children?" It is idle to ask this question, and all efforts at answering it are not only vain, but they are even irreverent. We may be sure, however, of one thing, that in every pain and trial there is a blessing folded. We may miss it, but it is there, and the loss is ours if we do not get it. Every night of sorrow carries in its dark bosom its own lamps of comfort. The darkness of grief and trial is full of benedictions. "The dark hath many dear avails; The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly muse. "Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain thou not, my heart, for these Bank in the current of the will." The most blessed lives in the world are those that have borne the burden of suffering. "Where, think you," asks James Martineau, "does the Heavenly Father hear the tones of deepest love, and see on the uplifted face the light of most heartfelt gratitude? Not where his gifts are most profuse, but where they are most meagre; not within the halls of successful ambition, or even in the dwellings of unbroken domestic peace; but where the outcast, flying from persecution, kneels in the evening on the rocks whereon he sleeps; at the fresh grave, where, as the earth is opened, heaven in answer opens too; by the pillow of the wasted sufferer, where the sunken eye, denied sleep, converses with the silent stars, and the hollow voice enumerates in low prayer the scanty list of comforts, the easily remembered blessings, and the shortened tale of hopes. Genial, almost to a miracle, is the soil of sorrow, wherein the smallest seed of love, timely falling, becometh a tree, in whose foliage the birds of blessed song lodge and sing unceasingly." The truly happiest, sweetest, tenderest homes are not those where there has been no sorrow, but those which have been overshadowed with grief, and where Christ's comfort was accepted. The very memory of the sorrow is a gentle benediction that broods ever over the household, like the afterglow of sunset, like the silence that comes after prayer. In every burden of sorrow there is a blessing sent from God, which we ought not to thrust away. In one of the battles of the Crimea, a cannon-ball struck inside a fort, gashing the earth and sadly marring the garden beauty of the place. But from the ugly chasm there burst forth a spring of water, which flowed on thereafter, a living fountain. So the strokes of sorrow gash our hearts, leaving ofttimes wounds and scars, but they open for us fountains of rich blessing and of new life.