December 8

"But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing." James 1:4.

Are you a child of affliction, dear reader? Ah! how many whose eye falls on this question shall say, "I am the man that has seen affliction!" Dearly beloved, so too was your Lord and Master, and so too have been the most holy and eminent of His disciples. Then "think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy." This is the path along which all the Lord's covenant people are led; and in this path, thorny though it be, they pluck some of their choicest flowers, and find some of their sweetest fruits.

I am not addressing myself to those who are strangers to sanctified sorrow—whose voyage thus far has been over a smooth and summer sea—whose heart's affections have never been sundered, whose budding hopes have never been blighted—whose spring blossoms have never fallen, even while the fruit was beginning to appear—or whose sturdy oaks around which they fondly and closely clung, have never been stricken at their side: to such, I speak a mystery when I speak of the peculiar and costly blessings of sanctified affliction. Not so the experienced child of God, the "man that has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath." He is a witness to the truth of what I say. From this mine, he will tell you, he has dug his richest ore—in this field he has found his sweetest fruit. The knowledge of God to which he has here attained—His tender, loving, and wise dealings with His people—of His glorious character and perfections, His unchangeable love and faithfulness—his knowledge of Christ—His all-sufficiency and fullness, His sympathy and love—the knowledge of himself—his poverty, vileness, unworthiness—oh where, and in what other school, could these high attainments have been made, but in the low valley of humiliation, and beneath the discipline of the covenant of grace? thus does the Spirit sanctify the soul through the medium of God's afflictive dispensations; thus they deepen the work of grace in the heart—awaken the soul from its spiritual drowsiness—empty, humble, and lay it low—thus they lead to prayer, to self-examination, and afresh to the atoning blood; and in this way, and by these means, the believer advances in holiness, "through sanctification of the Spirit."

Blessed school of heavenly training! By this afflictive process, of what profounder teaching, what deeper purification, have we become the favored subjects! It is good for us to have been afflicted. Now have we, like our Lord, learned obedience by the things which we have suffered; and like Him, too, are being made perfect through suffering. The heart has been emptied of its self-confidence—the shrine has been despoiled of its idol—the affections that had been seduced from God, have returned to their rest—the ties that bound us to the vanities of a world, perishing in its very using, have become loosened—the engagements that absorbed our sympathies, and secularized our minds, have lost their fascination and their power—the beguiling and treacherous enjoyments that wove their spell around us, have grown tasteless and insipid—and thus by all these blessed and hallowed results of our trial, the image of the earthy has become more entirely effaced, and the image of the heavenly more deeply engraved, and more distinctly legible.