much as the consciousness of good, grace, and peace, comes through affliction rightly understood, as sanctified by the purification it brings to the flesh, — to pride, self-ignorance, self-will, self-love, self-justification. Sweet, indeed, are these uses of His rod! Well is it that the Shepherd of Israel passes all His flock under His rod into His fold; thereby numbering them, and giving them refuge at last from the elements of earth.
“Love thine enemies” is identical with “Thou hast no enemies.” Wherein is this conclusion relative to those who have hated thee without a cause? Simply, in that those unfortunate individuals are virtually thy best friends. Primarily and ultimately, they are doing thee good far beyond the present sense which thou canst entertain of good.
Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethargic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the contents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and unworthy of human aims.
And wherefore our failure longer to relish this fleeting sense, with its delicious forms of friendship, wherewith mortals become educated to gratification in personal pleasure and trained in treacherous peace? Because it is the great and only danger in the path that winds upward. A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon
