"Well, _no_; not first thing, I don't think," returned Jarvis at length. "He'd ha' got him o' some good first, and gone in to make him comfortable arter." "Then I suppose you would rather be of some good and uncomfortable, than of no good and comfortable?" said Marion. "I hope so, grannie," answered Jarvis; and "_I_ would;" "Yes;" "That I would," came from several voices in the little crowd, showing what an influence Marion must have already had upon them. "Then," she said,--and I saw by the light which rose in her eyes that she was now coming to the point,--"Then, surely it must be worth our while to bear discomfort in order to grow of some good! Mr. Jarvis has truly said, that, if Jesus had had such a father, he would have made him of some good before he made him comfortable: that is just the way your Father in heaven is acting with you. Not many of you would say you are of much good yet; but you would like to be better. And yet,--put it to yourselves,--do you not grumble at every thing that comes to you that you don't like, and call it bad luck, and worse--yes, even when you know it comes of your own fault, and nobody else's? You think if you had only this or that to make you comfortable, you would be content; and you call it very hard that So-and-so should be getting on well, and saving money, and you down on your luck, as you say. Some of you even grumble that your neighbors' children should be healthy when yours are pining. You would allow that you are not of much good yet; but you forget that to make you comfortable as you are would be the same as to pull out Joseph's misfitted thrones and doors, and make his misshapen buckets over again for him. That you think so absurd that you can't believe the story a bit; but you would be helped out of all _your_ troubles, even those you bring on yourselves, not thinking what the certain consequence would be, namely, that you would grow of less and less value, until you were of no good, either to God or man. If you think about it, you will see that I am right. When, for instance, are you most willing to do right? When are you most ready to hear about good things? When are you most inclined to pray to God? When you have plenty of money in your pockets, or when you are in want? when you have had a good dinner, or when you have not enough to get one? when you are in jolly health, or when the life seems ebbing out of you in misery and pain? No matter that you may have brought it on yourselves; it is no less God's way of bringing you back to him, for he decrees that suffering shall follow sin: it is just then you most need it; and, if it drives you to God, that is its end, and there will be an end of it. The prodigal was himself to blame for the want that made him a beggar at the swine's trough; yet that want was the greatest blessing God could give to him, for it drove him home to his father.