May 20

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.—REV. iii, 19.

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown;

No traveler ever reach'd that blest abode,

Who found not thorns and briers in his road.

WILLIAM COWPER.

To the Christian the teaching of sorrow is teaching to know Christ. Others may learn what is called resignation; may apply to the benumbed sensation adages which amount to this when weighed, that they must bear what they cannot help. His is a very different and far higher lesson. A dismal road, indeed, is the path of worldly resignation under bereavement or anxiety, a path full of sad remembrances, ghastly with the decayed forms of vain philosophies, and sounding drearily with the confessions of past disappointment; whereas the Christian's path in sorrow is cheered by his Saviour's voice and presence, and animated by the glorious cloud of witnesses who have followed him through suffering unto triumph.

DEAN ALFORD.

The best cure for sorrow is to sympathize with another in his sorrow. The cure for despondency is to lift the burden from some other heart.

The Household.