It is interesting to note the method of Jesus in training his apostles. The aim of true friendship anywhere is not to make life easy for one's friend, but to make something of the friend. That is God's method. He does not hurry to take away every burden under which he sees us bending. He does not instantly answer our prayer for relief, when we begin to cry to him about the difficulty we have, or the trial we are facing, or the sacrifice we are making. He does not spare us hardship, loss, or pain. He wants not to make things easy for us, but to make something of us. We grow under burdens. It is poor, mistaken fathering or mothering that thinks only of saving a child from hard tasks or severe discipline. It is weak friendship that seeks only pleasure and indulgence for a loved one. "The chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do the best we can." Jesus was the truest of friends. He never tried to make the burden light, the path smooth, the struggle easy. He wished to make men of his apostles,--men who could stand up and face the world; men whose character would reflect the beauty of holiness in its every line; men in whose hands his gospel would be safe when they went out as his ambassadors. He set for each apostle a high ideal, and then helped him to work up to the ideal. He taught them that the law of the cross is the law of life, that the saving of one's life is the losing of it, and that only when we lose our life, as men rate it, giving it out in love's service, do we really save it. It is not easy to make a man. It is said that the violin-makers in distant lands, by breaking and mending with skilful hands, at last produce instruments having a more wonderful capacity than ever was possible to them when new, unbroken and whole. Whether this be true or not of violins, it certainly is true of human lives. We cannot merely grow into strength, beauty, nobleness, and power of helpfulness, without discipline, pain, and cost. It is written even of Jesus himself that he was made perfect through suffering. There was no sin in him; but his perfectness as a sympathizing Friend, as a helpful Saviour, came through struggle, trial, pain, and sorrow. Not one of the apostles reached his royal strength as a man, as a helper of men, as a representative of Jesus, without enduring loss and suffering. No man who ever rises to a place of real worth and usefulness in the world walks on a rose-strewn path. We never can be made fit for anything beautiful and worthy without cost of pain and tears. Always it is true that-- "Things that hurt and things that mar Shape the man for perfect praise; Shock and strain and ruin are Friendlier than the smiling days."