It is only the love of God, therefore, that will steady our lives, and bear us up in the thick of tribulations. It is the confident assurance that we, although so unworthy, are the objects of divine complacency that awakens in our hearts a return of burning charity, and enables us to say, with the Psalmist, when the day is darkest “The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”(44) We are not to fear men, said our Lord, who, when they have destroyed the body, can do no more;(45) neither shall we be in dread of our Master, if armed with the gift of His love, “for fear hath pain, but love casteth out fear.” Rather shall we, like the martyrs of old, mindful of the gift of God, go bravely forth to the battle of life, or to the slaughter, calmly, hopefully, cheerfully. While humbly, but steadfastly trustful of the Shepherd that leads us, we shall not be disturbed or troubled; the present shall be shorn of its terrors, the future of its forebodings. This truly is the triumph of life, when love, not fear, has come to rule us. This is the broader, larger life—the forerunner of life eternal in which our days are passed in calm serenity—in which we press on with undaunted tread, alike under frowning clouds, or under a star-lit sky; alike with the joys of friendship around us, or alone amidst the graves of the dead. We must not infer from this that the love of God which is our strength, the source of our courage, will blunt our feelings or harden our lives. It does not seal up the fountain of tears, or make us insensible to the pains and sorrows of life, which belong to the lot of all. In a certain sense it is likely true that those suffer most in life who are most united to God; for they feel most the coldness of the world and its desolation, its want of love and sympathy, its degradation and its misery. Hence it would be a mistake to think that the friends of God in this life are either exempted from pain and sorrow, or made insensible to them, either in themselves or in others. Of these and other evils they are truly more keenly aware than worldly men, if for no other reason than because of the superior refinement of their nature and the spiritual outlook of their vision. It is sin, after all, that hardens while it weakens. Sin closes the heart to love, it renders its victims cold, unsympathetic and selfish; whereas the gifts of grace and holiness are tenderness, mercy, strength. But though all have to suffer, both the holy and the unholy, the difference between them is this, that the ungodly are borne down and overcome by their sorrows and crosses, while the spiritual are always triumphing even in the midst of apparent defeat. To the foolish they seem to be vanquished, yet they conquer; often they seem on the verge of surrender, when they emerge in victory; they seem to die, when behold they live!(46)