IN rough-plowed fields of pain or woe Our rich delights we glean; Few hearts can e'er a rapture know Except through anguish keen. AFFLICTIONS Humanity has always been a sufferer. The records show one poor fellow of four thousand years ago the victim of horrible ulcers covering his whole body. His nurse could not stay near him. Even his wife, standing at a distance from the stench, told him to "Curse God and die." But the fellow would not curse. He dressed his own wounds, refused to repine, and wrote a book on patience that has blessed lots of people and made his name immortal. Everybody knows Job. The truth is, there are few afflictions which have no compensations. In 1750 John Brown, himself diseased and halfderanged, was moved to pen these lines: Now, let us thank the Eternal Power, convinced A great many noble people have gone under affliction's cloud, yet have come out from it bright and shining. There was Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, whose face was utterly disfigured by malignant scrofula, injuring both his sight and hearing; yet he would not give up, and at the age of sixty-seven took up the study of Greek and Latin, finding worlds of satisfaction in it. In his old age he read the Enid through in twelve nights, fairly gloating over the pleasure of it, and six months before his death, which occurred from a surgical operation for the relief of his dropsy, he requested a distinguished musician to teach him the scales of music, saying that he would find "the pleasure of a new sense in it." Then there was the good and great Dr. Taylor Lewis, "as deaf as a post," yet a mighty scholar and a very useful man. Also Dr. John Kitto, who referred to the solitude of his own spirit with such evident painfulness, who had lost the power of hearing when twelve years of age, yet became a bright litterateur himself, and a great helper to other men of letters. The world is full of afflicted people. Hardly one person in a hundred is perfectly sound. Our most common form of salutation, "How are you?" affords a chance for numberless complaints. It is a relief to hear the glad response, "I am well.” Afflictions seem to be beneficial to some people. "The good are better made by ill, As odors crushed are sweeter still." As a gem is polished by friction, so a man is often brightened by affliction. Our poet Longfellow made this confession: "It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life." Most of us do not want to be too much sun-burned nor pelted too hard by storms, but a little of the rough won't hurt us. "The soul that suffers is stronger than the soul that rejoices." Just as a sweeping wind toughens the fibers of the oak, so the cyclones of pain and grief may settle us in our places and make us more serviceable to somebody. Sometimes affliction serves to discover to us our weakness, and we are then helped to find a cure, and so the outcome is good. At any rate, afflictions will and do come, and whether light or heavy, we have got to bear them, or get rid of them, and we may as well do so cheerfully. THE JOY OF TEARS We weep for joy, not grief, From pains acute and heartaches; We weep for love, not hate, Love of emotion great, When life in misery partakes. |