Remarks on the Uses of Chastisement [pp. 342-357]

The Uses of Chastisement.
best hands, I deserve thy stripes, I yield myself to thy dis pensations, thy will be done!" Happy is he who, like Da vid, can look bacj upon chastisements and say, "I was dumb,
I opened not my mouth, because thou didst it." Psal. xxxix.
"Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of
God, that He may exalt you in due time," yet, if his rod
should long abide upon you, if you are ready, like Job, to
cry, from repeated and continued strokes, "He hath set me
up for his mark. He breaketh me with breach upon breach.
He hath fenced up my way so that I cannot pass, and he hath
set darkness in my paths," yet even then, "remember the pa-.
tience of Job, and the end of the Lord," and say, "Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him."
Some may be disposed to think, in the time when all God's
waves and billows go over them, that they could acquiesce
and be comforted, if they perceived any way of escape, if they
could reasonably expect deliverance: and this is the whole
of what is sometimes called Christian resignation. Yet, the
comfort in this case is merely worldly. The grace of God
can do more than this; it can make you willing still to endure, and in enduring still to praise.
Say not, "I could be content if I were sure of deliverance."
God has not promised absolutely to remove the chastisement.
Perhaps it is his holy wvill not to deliver. Perhaps it is this
very thing in your afflictions which is to ensure you the
blessing from the Lord. The apostle Paul earnestly desired,
and thrice besought the Lord to deliver him from that trial
which he calls the thorn in his flesh, the messenger of Satan
to buffet him. Yet, as far as we are informed, it was continued to the end of his life. But mark the glorious indemnification: "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength
is made perfect in weakness." Upon this declaration, the
apostle calmly, nay, joyfully goes forward under his burden,
singing as he pursues his pilgrimage: "Most glad-ly, therefore,
will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the powver of Christ
may rest upon me, therefore I takle pleasure in infirmities,
in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for
Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then am I strong." The
sweet support under every possible calamity is, that Godcl can
turn it into a blessing, and, that if we have faith ire will do
so. With respect, therefore, to the use of afflictions, "6all
things are possible to him that believeth."
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