It was love at first sight.  Boaz forms an attachment for the womanly gleaner—­an attachment full of undying interest to the Church of God in all ages; while Ruth, with an ephah, or nearly a bushel of barley, goes home to Naomi to tell her the successes and adventures of the day.  That Ruth, who left her native land of Moab in darkness, and traveled through an undying affection for her mother-in-law, is in the harvest-field of Boaz, is affianced to one of the best families in Judah, and becomes in after-time the ancestress of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory!  Out of so dark a night did there ever dawn so bright a morning?

I. I learn, in the first place, from this subject how trouble develops character.  It was bereavement, poverty, and exile that developed, illustrated, and announced to all ages the sublimity of Ruth’s character.  That is a very unfortunate man who has no trouble.  It was sorrow that made John Bunyan the better dreamer, and Doctor Young the better poet, and O’Connell the better orator, and Bishop Hall the better preacher, and Havelock the better soldier, and Kitto the better encyclopaedist, and Ruth the better daughter-in-law.

I once asked an aged man in regard to his pastor, who was a very brilliant man, “Why is it that your pastor, so very brilliant, seems to have so little heart and tenderness in his sermons?” “Well,” he replied, “the reason is, our pastor has never had any trouble.  When misfortune comes upon him, his style will be different.”  After awhile the Lord took a child out of that pastor’s house; and though the preacher was just as brilliant as he was before, oh, the warmth, the tenderness of his discourses!  The fact is, that trouble is a great educator.  You see sometimes a musician sit down at an instrument, and his execution is cold and formal and unfeeling.  The reason is that all his life he has been prospered.  But let misfortune or bereavement come to that man, and he sits down at the instrument, and you discover the pathos in the first sweep of the keys.

Misfortune and trials are great educators.  A young doctor comes into a sick-room where there is a dying child.  Perhaps he is very rough in his prescription, and very rough in his manner, and rough in the feeling of the pulse, and rough in his answer to the mother’s anxious question; but years roll on, and there has been one dead in his own house; and now he comes into the sick-room, and with tearful eye he looks at the dying child, and he says, “Oh, how this reminds me of my Charlie!” Trouble, the great educator.  Sorrow—­I see its touch in the grandest painting; I hear its tremor in the sweetest song; I feel its power in the mightiest argument.