Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/82

66 Thou art right. Immortal Shakespeare, great poet of humanity:

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