Life often seems to be a mere game, where the successful player pulls down all the other men into his own lap.  Let suspicions arise about a man’s character, and he becomes like a bank in a panic, and all the imputations rush on him and break down in a day that character which in due time would have had strength to defend itself.  There are reputations that have been half a century in building, which go down under some moral exposure, as a vast temple is consumed by the touch of a sulphurous match.  A hog can uproot a century plant.

In this world, so full of heartlessness and hypocrisy, how thrilling it is to find some friend as faithful in days of adversity as in days of prosperity!  David had such a friend in Hushai; the Jews had such a friend in Mordecai, who never forgot their cause; Paul had such a friend in Onesiphorus, who visited him in jail; Christ had such in the Marys, who adhered to Him on the cross; Naomi had such a one in Ruth, who cried out:  “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried:  the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

III.  Again, I learn from this subject that paths which open in hardship and darkness often come out in places of joy.  When Ruth started from Moab toward Jerusalem, to go along with her mother-in-law, I suppose the people said:  “Oh, what a foolish creature to go away from her father’s house, to go off with a poor old woman toward the land of Judah!  They won’t live to get across the desert.  They will be drowned in the sea, or the jackals of the wilderness will destroy them.”  It was a very dark morning when Ruth started off with Naomi; but behold her in my text in the harvest-field of Boaz, to be affianced to one of the lords of the land, and become one of the grandmothers of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.  And so it often is that a path which often starts very darkly ends very brightly.

When you started out for heaven, oh, how dark was the hour of conviction—­how Sinai thundered, and devils tormented, and the darkness thickened!  All the sins of your life pounced upon you, and it was the darkest hour you ever saw when you first found out your sins.  After awhile you went into the harvest-field of God’s mercy; you began to glean in the fields of divine promise, and you had more sheaves than you could carry, as the voice of God addressed you, saying:  “Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.”  A very dark starting in conviction, a very bright ending in the pardon and the hope and the triumph of the Gospel!