“The season when the bushes are stripped bare and the bitter substance is poured into the soil and is left to be watered by the rains of heaven, is called up here ‘the night of sorrow.’ But this present season, when the bushes are all laden with blossom and the oil is ready to be extracted from them, is ‘the morning of joy’ when all the sorrow and bitter experiences are changed into gladness. Listen to the birds singing, Grace and Glory, and see if you can understand their song.”

They stood together for a few moments in silence and suddenly the singing of the birds became audible as a lovely song which she could understand quite clearly. It was this:

Hark to love’s triumphant shout!

“Joy is born from pain,

Joy is sorrow inside out,

Grief remade again.

Broken hearts look up and see

This is love’s own victory.”

Here marred things are made anew,

Filth is here made clean,

Here are robes, not rags, for you,

Mirth where tears have been.

Where sin’s dreadful power was found,

Grace doth now much more abound.

Hark! such songs of jubilation!

Every creature sings,

Great the joy of every nation,

“Love is King of kings.

See, ye blind ones! Shout, ye dumb!

Joy is sorrow overcome.”

As she listened Grace and Glory remembered the long, bitter, and difficult journey which she herself had made up to the High Places when Sorrow and Suffering had been her companions, and the “long night of sorrow” had seemed sometimes as though it would never end. As she recalled that journey she thought that never had she heard so lovely a song or understood the glorious truth that joy is sorrow overcome and transformed.

“If other nights of sorrow must come to me,” she said to herself, “I can never fear nor dread them again, for I know they are only the seasons when the camphire bushes of the King are prepared and made ready to produce the oil of gladness. Oh, how lovely his thoughts and his plans are, how great is his wonderful goodness and loving-kindness. His ways of grace past finding out! Oh, that I may always react to sorrow in such a way that it will be overcome and be changed into his joy.” Here and there on the slopes grew great spreading trees, and in the shade of one of these the two sat down and began to talk together.

From the Mountain of Camphire they could look out on the dazzlingly white peaks of the still Higher Places and could see the summit of the Black Mountain just appearing above the clouds and mist. And once again the contrast between the joy and the beauty of the slopes on which they were sitting and the desolation of the ruined mountain opposite struck Grace and Glory with a sensation of almost unbearable pity and pain.

As though he read her very thoughts and spoke in answer to them, she heard the voice of the King saying: