And here also I find a word of help and courage and cheer for you and me, my precious comrade. I am not sure that you could receive any more valuable Christmas gift than the full realisation of this truth--_that your advance from the infancy to the manhood of your life in God will not be hindered and delayed, but rather will be helped and quickened by the storms and trials, the conflicts and sufferings, which will overtake you_. It was so with the man Christ Jesus; it has been so with thousands of His chosen. As He, our dear Lord, was made perfect through suffering, so are His saints. We are "chosen in the furnace of affliction," and often cast into it, too! And yet He who chooses all our changes, might have spared us every trial and conflict, and taken us to victory without a battle, and to rest without a toil. But He knows better what will make us _men_, and it is _men_ He wants to glorify Him--men, not babes. The dark valleys of bitterness and loneliness are often better for us than the land of Beulah. A certain queen, once sitting for her portrait, commanded that it should be painted without shadows. "Without shadows!" said the astonished artist. "I fear your Majesty is not acquainted with the laws of light and beauty. There can be no good portrait without shading." No more can there be a good Salvationist without trial and sorrow and storm. There might, perhaps, remain a stunted and unfruitful infant life--but a _man_ in Christ Jesus, a _Soldier_ of the Cross, a _leader_ of God's people, without tribulation _there can never be_. Patience, experience, faith, hope, love, if they do not actually grow from tribulations, are helped by them in their growth. For what says the Apostle? "Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed." The finest pine-trees grow in the stormiest lands. The tempests make them strong. Surgeons tell us that their greatest triumphs are often those in which the patients have suffered most at their hands--for every stroke of the knife is to heal. The child you most truly love is the one you most anxiously correct, and "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." Oh, _do_ believe that by every blow of disappointment and sorrow He permits to fall upon you, He is striving to bring you to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ Jesus. _Do_ work with Him in the full knowledge that He will not forsake you. He, the Man who has penetrated to the heart of every form of sorrow, and left a blessing there; He who has watched in silence by every kind of earthly grief, and found its antidote: the Man who trod the wine-press alone--He will be with you.