Although human miseries—pain, poverty, suffering and death—are, as we know, the consequences, just and equitable, of original sin, it is a shortsighted faith and a defective vision that find in these crosses only chastisement for sin. Truly, they should not have been, had we never sinned; but as God, in His mercy, draws good out of evil, so has He made these inevitable results of our transgression serve a higher purpose and minister to noble ends. The Saviour came that we might have life, that we might progress and advance to ever fuller and more abundant life.(49) His aim, and the aim and purpose of His heavenly Father, since the very dawn of our creation, has been to lead us to happiness—to perfect, abundant, eternal happiness. It would be of little account to be happy here, unless we are also to rejoice eternally. It would be a poor exchange and a paltry satisfaction, to be present at the feasts of men, only to forfeit our place at the banquet of angels. But our heavenly reward and our celestial crown are to be merited and won here below; they are to follow upon our earthly labors. “Only he shall be crowned,” says St. Paul, “who has legitimately engaged in the battle.”(50) And did not the Master say Himself, “Let him who wishes to come after me deny himself and take up his cross and follow me?”(51) Did He not declare that we must die to live? that we must surrender our life here, if we would keep it eternally? “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.”(52) We cannot serve two masters, we cannot serve God and mammon. If we would seek to avoid all pain and sorrow, and spend our lives in the pleasures of sense, we must be prepared to forego the future joys of the soul; if we would pass our days indulging the flesh and chasing the phantoms of time, we must needs make ready for the death of the spirit and the forfeit of all that is lasting.