Now there are two or three touches in this little story worth noticing.  God sends us some of our best joys in the guise of sorrows.

I.

He came into the world without a welcome.

I venture to say, and I thank God for it, that there is hardly one of my readers of whom that can be said.  No matter into what home you were born, there was a welcome awaiting you on the part of one at least.  It may be that no one else was particularly glad, that every one else looked upon you as one too many; but your mother at least met you with a sweet kiss which plainly said, thank God for this gift.  Here, however, there was not even that; this child was received with misgivings and fears, and awoke no joy in the mother’s breast.  She called his name Jabez, which means sorrowful, because she had borne him in sorrow.

Of course, we do not know what lies behind that, but it was something of a heart-burning or heart-breaking kind; either the father was dead, or the home was in a state of terrible poverty and distress, or the child was a child of shame; you can only guess, and all your queries will probably be wide of the mark.  But the mother looked mournfully upon him, and wished he had not come, and could not believe that a life which commenced so untowardly would ever be anything better than a burden to her, and a misfortune and misery to himself.  She expressed her fears and forebodings in the name which she gave him—­Jabez, the child of sorrow.

And while she was gloomily predicting his future with the black colours of her despondency, God was writing the child’s story in golden lines which would have set her heart leaping for joy could she have read them.  This despised one was to win for himself a noble name, and build up the house in honour, and become his mother’s pride, and make her young again in hope and gladness.

What fools we are when we set ourselves to forecast the future of our children!  They rarely develop on the lines we draw for them; the most promising of them sometimes flatter us in the bud and blossom, and mock us in the fruit.  Where we hope most there comes most heartache, our favourites are made our burdens, our pride is humbled by a harvest of sorrow.  And where we have bestowed most tenderness we get most ingratitude—­the child of many gifts, the joy of the household, the flower of the flock, turns out the nightmare of our lives, the one unhappy failure which costs us endless tears.

And perhaps it is partly our own fault, because we have pampered, flattered, and indulged them too much.  Ah! and just as often the reverse is true—­the child whom in our hearts we called Jabez; the slow, dull child so hard to teach, so unresponsive, or perhaps so wilful and obstinate that we never thought or spoke of him save with secret fears and misgivings—­the child who was always to be a burden and a cross to us, develops by-and-by in beautiful and unexpected