So, very often in our worldly business or in our spiritual career, we start off on a very dark path.  We must go.  The flesh may shrink back, but there is a voice within, or a voice from above, saying, “You must go;” and we have to drink the gall, and we have to carry the cross, and we have to traverse the desert and we are pounded and flailed of misrepresentation and abuse, and we have to urge our way through ten thousand obstacles that have been slain by our own right arm.  We have to ford the river, we have to climb the mountain, we have to storm the castle; but, blessed be God, the day of rest and reward will come.  On the tip-top of the captured battlements we will shout the victory; if not in this world, then in that world where there is no gall to drink, no burdens to carry, no battles to fight.  How do I know it?  Know it!  I know it because God says so:  “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat, for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe all tears from their eyes.”

It was very hard for Noah to endure the scoffing of the people in his day, while he was trying to build the ark, and was every morning quizzed about his old boat that would never be of any practical use; but when the deluge came, and the tops of the mountains disappeared like the backs of sea-monsters, and the elements, lashed up in fury, clapped their hands over a drowned world, then Noah in the ark rejoiced in his own safety and in the safety of his family, and looked out on the wreck of a ruined earth.

Christ, hounded of persecutors, denied a pillow, worse maltreated than the thieves on either side of the cross, human hate smacking its lips in satisfaction after it had been draining His last drop of blood, the sheeted dead bursting from the sepulchers at His crucifixion.  Tell me, O Gethsemane and Golgotha! were there ever darker times than those?  Like the booming of the midnight sea against the rock, the surges of Christ’s anguish beat against the gates of eternity, to be echoed back by all the thrones of heaven and all the dungeons of hell.  But the day of reward comes for Christ; all the pomp and dominion of this world are to be hung on His throne, uncrowned heads are to bow before Him on whose head are many crowns, and all the celestial worship is to come up at His feet, like the humming of the forest, like the rushing of the waters, like the thundering of the seas, while all heaven, rising on their thrones, beat time with their scepters:  “Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!  Hallelujah, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

    “That song of love, now low and far,
    Ere long shall swell from star to star;
    That light, the breaking day which tips
    The golden-spired Apocalypse.”