And you know the paradox, and the glory of it, is that the darker you make the shadows the more triumphantly hope laughs in the midst of them. The more difficult you make the night, the more hopeful and enticing is the sure confidence of the dawn that is not far away. Our word, “Cheer up! The worst is yet to come,” is as deep a Christian word as was ever yet spoken. Be glad, because darker things lie just ahead and then light beyond. Thank God that you are counted worthy for tribulations like these; for these are what wash white a man’s robes and make him fit to walk after the Lamb whithersoever He goes, in company with the men whose lips have never known a lie. All this is put finely for us in “The Ballad of the White Horse,” the best piece of work Chesterton has done. They were as dark days as ever had been in English history. Tide after tide of invasion from Norse and Dane had come pouring in. Again and again Alfred had called his men and gone out and fought, and each time in vain. Now, as he sits on his little island in the Thames among the reeds, the news comes to him that the Danes are on their way for a fresh invasion of his land. He kneels in prayer and asks the Virgin Mother whether he ought to go out yet once more. Again and again, he tells her, he has gone out in hope, and each time in the confidence that victory would be his, and each time he has come back defeated, his men killed, and his people to sink lower after each despair than the time before. And yet, as he prays to her he says that if she will give him one word of assurance, he will go again. But only this, as she stands by his side, will she say, “I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet, And the sea rises higher.” And there that day among the reeds under the promise only that the night was going to be blacker than he had ever known, that storms fiercer than he had ever breasted were coming, Alfred rises up to do what he had never done under the old assurance of easy victory, “Up over windy wastes and up Went Alfred over the shaws, Shaken of the joy of giants, The joy without a cause.” And as his men saw him coming, they thought it was with the old vain word of a sure victory, and they were about to tell him in advance that if he came with such a message they would follow him no more. But not now was Alfred’s word the easy word. No, but―― “This is the word of Mary, The word of the world’s desire; ‘No more of comfort shall you get Save that the sky grows darker yet, And the sea rises higher.’”