diamonds that are cut, not pebbles. And so no pain is malignant. It is not always even a penalty, but the price without which excellence cannot be bought.

"Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams,
Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth
Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom,
With earth's warm patch of sunshine well content.
'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up,
Whose golden rounds are our calamities,
Whereon our firm feet planting, nearer God
The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed."

-LOWELL.

Now, he who does not expect to be exempt from pain, who also believes that in some way it is beneficent, has a covering to which to resort in the storm. "The whole wisdom and magnanimity of life consist in a will conformed to what is, with a heart ready for what is not." Pain is often wisdom's handboard pointing to a better, safer path. Sorrow is homeopathic. We are given little doses to cure us of greater ills. The loss of a hand spares us the loss of the arm. There are griefs that no prudence and no forethought can either avoid or avert. But there are others also which none but fools suffer more than

once.

Sorrows and disappointments influence character tremendously. Nothing has more weight on the aim of life. Much of our thinking and planning goes to shun what is considered life's The weak man often succumbs before these, and with the slander against the Creator in his heart, that life is not worth living, gives way to melancholy, moroseness, despair, or suicide. The stoic is little better. He receives his own ills with clinched teeth and defiant indifference, and looks with tearless apathy on those of others. Hearts were made to ache, and it is divinely intended that they may improve by the pain. Solomon says, "By the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better." And of a greater than Solomon we read, "Though he was a son yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered," and was made "perfect through sufferings." Failure

and disappointment have generally taught the earnest man his choicest lessons. One of these, an American poet, says :

"Nor deem the irrevocable past

As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If rising on its wrecks at last

To something nobler we attain."

Bereavement makes the heart tender and sympathetic; confidence betrayed leads to wiser caution; sickness suggests more care of health; failure in business teaches better methods, and sin, unless one loves it, by soiling the conscience leads to the Cleanser.

Sorrow confers a value which nothing else can give. Value is more than the product of labor. There are price marks higher than any ever reached by toil. Men esteem highest that worthy thing for which they have suffered most. Christ not only died for men because he loves them, but he doubly loves them because he died for them. Liberties, political, social, religious, are so precious because they were all bought with blood. The sufferings of the early colonists and of the Revolutionary fathers at Valley Forge endear this nation to their children. Dollars are but dust, and nothing that dollars can buy is worth much. The precious things of life come to men only through pain-pain of body, brain, and heart.

Sorrows give an excellent opportunity for the exercise of the highest virtues. It was the lepers of Molokai that made Father Damien a hero. If the traveler going down from Jerusalem to Jericho had not fallen among thieves, the priest and the Levite would not have lost their reputation and the good Samaritan would not have made his. He who lives only to escape or to surmount his own allotted sufferings may be a prudent man but he is basely selfish. He who can bear another's griefs is like him who was the normal man, who suffered much himself that all others might suffer less.

Building for Eternity.

REV. H. B. HARTZLER, D.D.,

Bible Teacher, Moody's Training School, Mount Hermon, Mass.

"W

HEN a man builds his home," says T. DeWitt Talmage, "he builds for eternity." The saying is true; yet the home itself is only for time, and not for eternity. It is only a part of the scaffolding on which the builder for eternity is doing his work of raising up the imperishable walls of human character. When the work of time is done, the scaffolding falls away, and only the spiritual structure remains, "a house not made with hands," indestructible and eternal. Looking out from the home window, upon the whole wide realm of the material world, with all its latter-day wonders of science, art, and discovery, and all its bewildering variety and complexity of appliances, we see but a larger part of a vast system of temporal scaffolding, upon which the builders for eternity find temporary footing and facility to carry on the real, abiding work of life.

One of the greatest of men, who had an experience perhaps never paralleled in human history, in being permitted to pass the line of the unseen and return again, with untranslatable visions and experiences in his heart, to climb the earthly scaffolding and carry his unfinished work to completion, declares that "the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." So the testimony of God, through all ages, has been that this material, temporal frame of nature is to serve a temporary purpose, for a season of time which to him is but as "one day," or as "a watch in the night," and then shall fall away, as the husk from the ripe

corn, as the scaffolds from the finished building, disclosing the great structure in all its details, on which all the generations of men have wrought, and of which they form constituent parts.

When Jesus, the Divine Teacher, draws the line of division between the wise and the foolish, he puts on one side all those who build their house on the sand, for time only, and on the other side those who build on the rock for eternal security. Paul emphasizes the supreme importance of bedding one's lifework on the one immovable, imperishable foundation-" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." He carries the thought farther, from the foundation to the superstructure, and distinguishes between the perishable and the imperishable materials which the human builders use, with the solemn warning, "Let each one see how he builds on it," for, says he, "if anyone buildeth on this foundation either gold, or silver, or precious stones, or wood, or hay, or stubble, the work of each will be exposed to view; for the day will expose it; because it is to be tested by fire; and the fire will disclose the work of each, of what sort it is. And that builder whose work shall endure will receive his reward. And he whose work shall burn up will suffer loss; yet himself will escape; but it will be as from the fire."

The really valuable, precious, durable materials, represented by gold, silver, and precious stones, which enter into the structure of a life that shall stand approved for eternity, are all unseen and spiritual. Christ specifies some of them when he calls the roll of the blessed ones-the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the hungerers after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the sufferers for righteousness' sake. Peter admonishes the builders for eternity to add layer to layer on the walls of character-faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, love. Paul's specifications are almost identical, showing that both had learned the art and science of spiritual architecture from the same Divine Master. They are these-love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

A structure built on the foundation of Christ, of such materials as these, is fire-proof, storm-proof, time-proof, judgmentproof, eternity-proof. It shall stand, when the "wood, hay, and stubble" houses shall have gone up in smoke, "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Not less true than beautiful is the thought expressed by Frederick W. Robertson in these words: "Feelings pass; thoughts and imagination pass; dreams pass; work remains. Through eternity, what you have done, that you are. They tell us that not a sound has ever ceased to vibrate through space; that not a ripple has ever been lost upon the ocean. Much more is it true that not a true thought, nor a pure resolve, nor a loving act, has ever gone forth in vain." Even so, for they have all gone into the solid structure of character that is eternal.

Says Dr. J. G. Holland, "Labor, calling, profession, scholarship, and artificial and arbitrary distinction of all sorts are incidents and accidents of life, and pass away. It is only man. hood that remains." As Apelles, the famous Grecian artist, wrought with painstaking care upon his pictures, he said, “I am painting for eternity." But the artist laid down his brush over two thousand years ago, and only the man remains.

Building for eternity! How startling and soul-arresting the thought! It can be done only in time, and all the eternity of the builder hangs upon the character thereof. It must be finished before the material footing of time gives way, and the scaffolding of the body, with its related world timbers, falls. The work is great and wonderful. The time for its performance is short. Nothing else, amidst all the contending claims of life, is of equal importance. Christ, who knows all about both worlds, sets this work on the forefront of all endeavor, as the supreme and all-embracing object of the highest, holiest ambition. The man who reverses this order is branded as a fool, who loses his eternity and himself in the poor, perishable gain of a few fleeting years-buying the self-indulgence of an hour with the price of a soul and an eternity of unmeasured possibilities of blessedness and glory.