When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the furnace, the fire did not stop them from moving, for they were seen “walking around.” Actually, the fire was one of the streets they traveled to their destination. The comfort we have from Christ’s revealed truth is not that it teaches us freedom from sorrow but that it teaches us freedom through sorrow.

O dear God, when darkness overshadows me, teach me that I am merely traveling through a tunnel. It will then be enough for me to know that someday it will be all right.

I have been told that someday I will stand at the top of the Mount of Olives and experience the height of resurrection glory. But heavenly Father, I want more—I want Calvary to lead up to it. I want to know that the shadows of darkness are the shade on a road—the road leading to Your heavenly house. Teach me that the reason I must climb the hill is because Your house is there! Knowing this, I will not be hurt by sorrow, if I will only walk in the fire. GEORGE MATHESON

“The road is too rough,” I said; “It is uphill all the way; No flowers, but thorns instead; And the skies over head are gray.” But One took my hand at the entrance dim, And sweet is the road that I walk with Him.

“The cross is too great,” I cried— “More than the back can bear, So rough and heavy and wide, And nobody near to care.” And One stooped softly and touched my hand: “I know. I care. And I understand.”

Then why do we fret and cry; Cross-bearers all we go: But the road ends by and by In the dearest place we know, And every step in the journey we May take in the Lord’s own company.

Many with lacerated feet have come back to tell the story and to testify that when the very foundations of earth seemed giving way, He remained whom no accident could take away , no chance ever change. This is the power of the Great Companionship.

Stretched on a rack, where they were torturing him piteously , one of the martyrs saw with cleansed and opened eyes, a Young Man by his side— not yet fifty years old —who kept wiping the beads of sweat from his brow .

When the fire is hottest, He is there. “And the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25 KJV). “He that is near Me is near the fire.”

That is why the heart of the Divine furnace is the place of the soul’s deepest peace. There is always one beside us when we go through the fire.

When John G. Paton stood beside that lonely grave in the South Sea Islands, when he with his own hands made his wife’ s coffin and with his own hands dug her grave, the savages were looking on. They had never seen it in this fashion. That man must fill in the sepulcher and soon leave it.

He says, “If it had not been for Jesus and the Presence that He vouchsafed me there, I would have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.” But John G. Paton found his Master with him through the dire darkness.

Sir Ernest Shackleton and two of his companions spent thirty-six hours among the snow mountains of New Georgia, seeking for a station that meant life or death to them and their waiting crew on Elephant Island.

Writing of that journey , he says, “It seemed to me, often, that we were four, not three.” He refers to the “guiding Presence” that went with them. Then in closing he writes, “A record of our journey would be incomplete without a reference to a subject so near to our hearts.”

Paul was not peculiarly privileged when he saw the Living One while en route to Damascus.

Kahlil Gibran, the Syrian, explaining his remarkable modern painting of Jesus, said: “Last night I saw His face again, clearer than I have ever seen it.”

Handel, composer of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” declared: “I did see God on His throne.”

During the terrible stress of war many affirmed positively that they saw “The White Comrade.”

Phillips Brooks testified, “He is here. I know Him. He knows me. It is not a figure of speech. It is the realest thing in the world.”

No distant Lord have I, Loving afar to be; Made flesh for me, He cannot rest Until He rests in me.

Brother in joy or pain, Bone of my bone was He; Now—intimacy closer still— He dwells Himself in me.

I need not journey far , This dearest Friend to see; Companionship is always mine, He makes His home with me.

MALTBIE D. BABCOCK