But we need not go to such an exceptional occurrence as that to find a field for this exercise of moral courage. Take all those incidents of life which happen day after day--the little child snatched from us in all its beauty and its innocence: the bright lad shot upon the field of battle in a moment, taken away with all his brightness, and his laughter, and his merriment; the man who loses in middle life his money and has to begin the hard struggle of saving all over again--how are we to explain it? What can we say to light up in any degree so vast a problem? There is, my dear brothers and sisters, I believe, no full explanation here, but there is a belief which comforts us, and that is, that these calamities of life are all being used for a great purpose; that when the Scripture says of God that "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver," it does give us some sort of clue which nerves us to bear what we have to bear. Those who pass from us, pass, we believe, into what has been called, "God's great Convalescent Home" in another world, but to us who have to suffer, who receive these strokes, the suffering is not useless; it is a furnace which has to fashion that heavenly tempered thing which we call "moral courage," and to produce it any suffering is worth bearing. Do think over that, you who may be going through the furnace now, do remember that you have not lost that lad, that child, for ever, that it is only a few years until you see him again; but, meanwhile, while he is prepared there, you are being prepared here. The character is everything, and if there can be produced in you and in me that moral courage which makes us like our Saviour, we shall not be sorry for it in the days to come.