We are in the habit of saying that the follower of Christ will always find goodness and mercy wherever he is led. This is true; but it must not be understood to mean that there will never be any hardness to endure, any cross to bear, any pain or loss to experience. We grow best under burdens. We learn most when lessons are hard. When we get through this earthly life, and stand on the other side, and can look back on the path over which we have been led, it will appear that we have found our best blessings where we thought the way was most dreary and desolate. We shall see then that what seemed sternness and severity in Christ was really truest and wisest friendship. One writes:-- "If you could go back to the forks of the road-- Back the long miles you have carried the load; Back to the place where you had to decide By this way or that through your life to abide; Back of the sorrow and back of the care; Back to the place where the future was fair-- If you were there now, a decision to make, Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take? Then, after you'd trodden the other long track, Suppose that again to the forks you went back, After you found that its promises fair Were but a delusion that led to a snare-- That the road you first travelled with sighs and unrest, Though dreary and rough, was most graciously blest, With a balm for each bruise and a charm for each ache, Oh, pilgrim of sorrow, which road would you take?" Sometimes good people are disappointed in the way their prayers are answered. Indeed, they seem not to be answered at all. They ask God to take away some trouble, to lift off some load, and their request is not granted. They continue to pray, for they read that we must be importunate, that men ought always to pray and not to faint; but still there seems no answer. Then they are perplexed. They cannot understand why God's promises have failed. But they have only misread the promises. There is no assurance given that the burdens shall be lifted off and carried for us. God would not be the wise, good, and loving Father he is, if at every cry of any of his children he ran to take away the trouble, or free them from the hardness, or make all things easy and pleasant for them. Such a course would keep us always children, untrained, undisciplined. Only in burden-bearing and in enduring can we learn to be self-reliant and strong. Jesus himself was trained on the battlefield, and in life's actual experiences of trial. He learned obedience by the things that he suffered. It was by meeting temptation and by being victorious in it that he became Master of the world, able to deliver us in all our temptations.