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Thou art right, immortal Shakespeare, great poet of
humanity:
Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, -
a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not
half remember this in the sunshine of joy
and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through
great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are
proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germinates
not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes,
but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher
joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive
stage of experience unfolds new views of divine
goodness and love.
Amidst gratitude for conjugal felicity, it is well to remember
how fleeting are human joys. Amidst conjugal
infelicity, it is well to hope, pray, and wait patiently on
divine wisdom to point out the path.
Husbands and wives should never separate if there
is no Christian demand for it. It is better to await the
logic of events than for a wife precipitately
to leave her husband or for a husband to
leave his wife. If one is better than the other, as must
always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good
company. Socrates considered patience salutary under
such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for
his philosophy.
Sorrow has its reward. It never leaves us
where it found us. The furnace separates
the gold from the dross that the precious metal may
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