[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0908":3},"SEPTEMBER 8\r\nThou hast enlarged me when I was in distress (Psalm 4:1).\r\nThis is one of the grandest testimonies ever given by man to the\r\nmoral government of God. It is not a man's thanksgiving that he has been set free from suffering. It is a thanksgiving that he has been\r\nset free through suffering: \"Thou hast enlarged me when I was in   distress.\" He declares the sorrows of life to have been themselves the source of life's enlargement.\r\nAnd have not you and I a thousand times felt this to be true? It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that \"the iron entered into his\r\nsoul.\" We all feel that what Joseph needed for his soul was just\r\nthe iron. He had seen only the glitter of the gold. He had been\r\nrejoicing in youthful dreams; and dreaming hardens the heart. He who sheds tears over a romance will not be most apt to help\r\nreality; real sorrow will be too unpoetic for him. We need the Iron to enlarge our nature. The gold is but a vision; the iron is an\r\nexperience. The chain which unites me to humanity must be an iron chain. That touch of nature which makes the world akin is not joy,\r\nbut sorrow; gold is partial, but iron is universal.\r\nMy soul, if thou wouldst be enlarged into human sympathy, thou must be narrowed into limits of human suffering Joseph's dungeon is the\r\nroad to Joseph's throne. Thou canst not lift the iron load of thy brother if the iron hath not entered into thee. It is thy limit\r\nthat is thine enlargement It is the shadows of thy life that are\r\nthe real fulfillment of thy dreams of glory. Murmur not at the\r\nshadows; they are better revelations than thy dreams. Say not that the shades of the prison-house have fettered thee; thy fetters are\r\nwings-wings of flight into the bosom of humanity. The door of thy\r\nprison-house is a door into the heart of the universe. God has\r\nenlarged thee by the binding of sorrow's chain. --George Matheson.\r\nIf Joseph had not been Egypt's prisoner, he never would have been\r\nEgypt's governor. The iron chain about his feet ushered in the golden chain about his neck. --Selected.",1783499793836]