Indulgent earthly parents are often capricious; and, therefore, the. apostle had occasion to warn fathers not to provoke their children to wrath. They sometimes chasten their children, says he, in our text, for their own pleasure. But not so "the Father of spirits." He is tempted by no passion, He is perturbed by no emotion, so as to lose sight of what is best for us. He never corrects willingly, nor grieves the children of men but most reluctantly. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him" and the parent is, we know, most compassionate when his discipline appears to the child most severe. The afflictions of our heavenly Father may sometimes seem severe; but He sees that no others would do. Who knows what is good for vain man, all the days that he liveth upon the earth?" God alone knows what is good for him, what is most conducive to his real interests, and what will accomplish his object. “His ways are a great deep, and his paths are past finding out."

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The apostle contrasts more particularly the end or purpose of the earthly and heavenly Parent. They chastened us for their own pleasure, but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

The earthly parent has no other view, sometimes, in chastening, than to gratify the irritable temper which mingles often with his real love to his children. He is sometimes displeased with one party, and vents his displeasure upon another. Parents among the heathen were proverbially cruel to their infant offspring. Infanticide prevailed among all the heathen nations, even the most refined, the Greeks and Romans. This proves that you cannot safely put any creature, even a child, under the absolute disposal of human power.

But God hates nothing that He has made. Ile delights in the works of his own hands; and those minds which are subdued with the graces of his own Spirit, and bear his image, enjoy his peculiar favour. "The Father himself loveth you," said our Lord, "because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God." They share the complacency with which Christ is regarded: "Thou hast loved them,” adds our Lord, addressing his heavenly Father, " as thou hast loved me." And the end of our spiritual Father, in all our chastisements, is to make us "partakers of his holiness." Who that knows what it is to be holy, but will rejoice in this end of the Divine discipline? To be made like to God, to be beautified with the graces of his own image, what a high and exalted design is this! And such is the effect of his chastisements. They wean the Christian from the world, they turn his mind back to Him who made it, they take him off from self-will, they break the perverseness which clings to the fallen heart. "My soul," says the Psalmist," is even as a weaned child," humbled within me, no longer meddling with things too high for me; quieted, calmed, composed; saying with the prophet, "What I know not, teach thou me;" "If I have done iniquity, I will do so no more."

Chastisement also quickens the spirit of prayer. This spirit always cleaves to God under affliction. Our Lord, when He was in

an agony, "prayed more earnestly." "If any be afflicted," the di rection is, "let Him pray." "Out of the depths," says the afflicted Psalmist, "have I cried unto Thee, O God." "When my soul is overwhelmed within me, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I." "But I give myself unto prayer," says the same sacred writer, when princes sat and spake against him.

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Faith in invisible realities is also most strengthened when it is the only light that shines. When we see nothing of a present world, then the glorious realities of a future state break upon the Christian; and these become more glorious from the shade which prevails around them. He says with the prophet, Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat: the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

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But time reminds me to stop. I will only say in' application, Remember, Christian, the privileges and duties which are before you. The time will come when you will bless God for your corrections, and will consider them the most important portion of his dealings with you. These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, will have worked out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Your present sorrows will soon end; they may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning; the vision is for an appointed time; they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Of those who are now singing in heaven their songs of triumph and joy before the throne of Christ, there is not one who did not come out of great tribulation. Remember that the trials to which piety is exposed from the contradiction of the world to the Spirit of Christ, is a part of this tribulation. As many as Christ loves, He rebukes and chastens. He seems to retire from you and hide his face; but his hand is active, and his wisdom employed still. The veil will soon be taken away, and you will see those afflictions to be the most necessary which are the most painful. Your faith, though now tried in the fire, will be found at last to praise, and honour, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

The Lord Christ was the great type and pattern of suffering. He achieved glory by suffering; He obtained dignity by humiliation. By being made the subject of death, He obtained eternal life. We must be conformed to Him in his death. We must drink of the cup which He drank of, and be baptized with the baptism wherewith He was baptized.

If you wish for an easy life, for worldly prosperity, for indulgence and comfort, then choose the broad road; but if you choose the narrow path, you must take up your cross, you must expect to be chastened; you must be in subjection to the Father of spirits, that you may live for evermore.

VOL. IV.-Sss

LXXX.

PROPER VIEWS AND IMPROVEMENT OF AFFLICTION.* HEBREWS, xii., 10: But he [chasteneth us] for our profit; that we might be partakers of his holiness.

[Preached at Broadmead, Bristol, Thursday morning, July 9, 1829, preparatory to the Lord's Supper.]

THE Hebrew Christians were subjected to extraordinary sufferings. The Jews, who were the chief instigators of persecution, pursued them, as apostates from the law of Moses, with peculiar hostility. The apostle arms them against their sufferings, which he teaches them to regard as designed for their benefit, and as marks of their filiation, of their adoption into the family of God. First, we may consider the light in which affliction ought to be viewed by Christians; and, secondly, the tendency which it has to benefit us.

I. With regard to the light in which affliction ought to be viewed by Christians: it should be regarded,

1. As coming from God. It is a great mistake to ascribe our afflictions to any second causes; they spring not out of the dust; they are instruments used by God for just and wise ends. In Scripture the wicked are called "His sword, the men of his hand, the rod in his hand :" the Assyrian was "the rod in his hand" to the Jews. David looked off from Shimei to God, when he said, "Let him curse, for the Lord hath bid him curse:" he saw only the will of God accomplished in the persecution, and he bowed beneath that will. To look only at the instrument irritates unholy passions; to look at the hand of God softens us into meekness and piety under every visitation, and disposes us to say, with the Psalmist, "I was dumb, because Thou didst it."

2. In the next place, we should regard our trials as merited by our sins, and, indeed, as far less than we deserve. They are the consequence of that, of which the malignity is beyond our comprehension. We can always measure the extent of our afflictions, but never the magnitude of our sins; consequently, we must confess, on every occasion, that we are mercifully corrected. "Shall a living man complain? a man for the punishment of his sin ?" "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not evil also?" We, sinners, who have not deserved good, but evil, from God!

3. Farther: we should view afflictions as the effect of fatherly wisdom and love. Other parents, even wise and tender parents, are liable to err, and to correct without cause; or they may mix

From the notes of the Rev. T. Grinfield.

their own temper with the correction: "We have had fathers of our flesh, who chastened us after their own pleasure." Not so our heavenly Father: He always chastens "us for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness." Recollect, our afflictions come from a Father, and He a Father of infinite tenderness: "Like as a father pitieth his children, the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." This consideration should change the aspect of affliction to the children of God: it is to be viewed, not as the effect of wrath, but as the proof of our Father's care for us, and designed to secure our happiness.

4. And, lastly, our trials should be received with a desire that his gracious design may be fulfilled in us. We should be more anxious that our afflictions should benefit us, than that they should be speedily removed from us; for they are intended to remove a far greater evil than any which they can occasion. It is, in reality, a most sparing and economical method which the Divine Being employs, when He uses these, "our light afflictions," in order to remove our sins; for sin is the great disease of our nature, which must be removed if we are to be made happy. It is far better that this disease should be expelled by the use of means, however painful, than that, by the withholding of those means, it should be increased, inflamed, and cause our destruction. We must be partakers of his holiness, that we may be of his happiness; and if it is true that "tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed," then are our afflictions, duly received, to be numbered among our greatest blessings! This, then, is the light, my dear brethren, in which you should accustom yourselves to view your afflictions; as commissioned by God; as merited by your sins; as the effect of perfect parental care; and with an earnest desire to derive the benefit designed in your sanctification.

II. Secondly, we may consider the tendency which affliction has to benefit us, to produce the end expressed in the words, "that we may be partakers of his holiness." This, as you must be aware from the whole tenour of Scripture, is the greatest end that can be proposed or fulfilled. There is nothing that can so much aggrandize and exalt the creature. It is to bring us by Jesus Christ into a resemblance of God; into a participation of his beauty and of his felicity! Now the way in which affliction tends to produce this great end is,

1. By giving us a just idea, giving us a practical impression of the evil of sin. Misery is the effect of sin, and only a practical sense of their connexion, only our receiving some of the wages of sin, enables us to form an adequate idea of its malignity. Plain as this awful truth may appear, we are always in danger of losing sight of it; and nothing tends more to generate such insensibility than a continued flow of prosperity. It is the wages of sin that make it appear terrible: if we were never af

flicted on account of sin, we should soon cease to feel its eva nature. God has, therefore, connected misery with sin, and the children of God, when afflicted, are reminded of sin as the cause; while they are also led to search out their own sin in particular, and to inquire why their affliction came upon them. Thus the widow asked Elijah, "Why hast thou brought my sin to remembrance, and slain my son ?" As the chastenings of a parent remind a child of his offence, so, and much more, the afflictions sent by God remind his children of their sin, and soften them to humiliation and godly sorrow. Who are those that are stout. hearted and callous in regard to sin? They are such as are lulled in the lap of indulgence; such as are saying, "To-morrow shall be as to-day, and much more abundant." It is the rod that brings us to recollection and repentance, and thus prepares us to partake of God's holiness. It is when our prospect is clouded, when we are brought into the wilderness, and our comforts removed, that we are led to forsake sin. This is necessary to our sanctification. Putting off the old man is essential to putting on the new before we can "learn to do well," we must 66 cease to do evil."

2. Affliction tends to convince us of the insufficiency of the present world. Nothing is more commonly allowed in words than this insufficiency; but, in the midst of worldly ease and pleasure, how difficult it is to feel it as we ought! When afflic tion comes, then we feel it. In a state of ease, we have only to exchange one object of desire for another; but when the world is impaired to us, when those we lean on are taken from us, then we must choose between despair and God; we must find comfort nowhere, or all in Him! The Christian is often observed to bear an overwhelming calamity better than the lighter afflictions of life; and the reason is this: that then, beaten off from every other support, he is driven to his Rock. In ordinary trials, we are apt to look to ourselves; in great disasters, we are compelled to go in the strength of another; the world appears a shadow, and only God remains!

Many are the lessons taught us by sufferings: many fruits of the Spirit ripen only in the deep waters of adversity; among these is,

3. Submission to the will of God. This, also, is a plain duty; none will deny it: but how is it learned? It is learned by a series of trials. Dispositions are not to be depended on, until they are settled into habits: till then, they "are like the early dew that passes away." Submission to the Divine will is acquired by degrees: at first the Christian is frequently impatient of the rod, like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke." Even Christ, though the Son, learned obedience by the things which He suffered. It is by exercise and habit that affliction "worketh patience." And, while we submit, we shall taste the sweetness of submission; for "patience worketh experience, and experience hope."