In Tribulation - or The Blessing of Trials by H. Clay Trumbull, Published in 1896, Full Text and PDF.

A very helpful consideration of how the Christian can be triumphant in Tribulation, Troubles and Sorrow, knowing these are working for his character and holiness and how to be at peace in these difficult times.

To the best of our knowledge we are of the understanding that this book, being published in 1896, and freely available elsewhere on the internet is in the public domain.

In Tribulation - or The Blessing of Trials, H. Clay Trumbull
Chapter Index: In-Page Navigation

Please click on the following links to go to each chapter or download the pdf copy.

FOREWORD

Only He who made our hearts fully understands them; and no one but the Son of man who is the Son of God can be touched with the feeling of all our infirmities, having been in all points tried as we have been tried. But whoever has had any experience of trials, suffering, sorrow, bereavement, and has been divinely helped to profit by that experience, can hope to be of service in words of sympathy to those similarly tried and troubled. It is the heart which bleeds with its own sorrows which can go out in living sympathy toward another bleeding heart; and it is the hearts that have gained comfort from the God of all comfort that can speak comforting words to others who are in any affliction, out of the comfort wherewith they themselves have been comforted of God.

The following pages were mainly written while their writer was being tested in the fierce flames of a furnace of trial, and while cheered by the ever-blessed companionship and comforting presence of the Son of God. It is hoped, by him who was thus tried and thus sustained, that his words out of the heart may come home to other hearts in similar need.

CHAPTER 1. MISSION OF TRIBULATION

We connect with the term "tribulation" the severest kind of distress, of suffering, of affliction. Yet the word "tribulation" is chiefly used in the Bible as expressive of a divinely sent, or a divinely permitted, state of trial, which may tend to the spiritual welfare of those who endure it patiently, or who improve it wisely. It behooves us, therefore, to consider carefully the nature and mission of tribulation, in order that we may know when we are in tribulation, and why; what tribulation is, and what is its mission.

Tribulation, as the term is employed in the Bible, means distress, or affliction, or trial, especially as growing out of straitness or pressure which hinders progress as one is, and makes it necessary for one to give up much that one would like to carry on without yielding. The root idea of the Hebrew word in the Old Testament which is translated "tribulation," and it is much the same with the correspondent Greek word in the New Testament, is that of squeezing or pressing, as between the walls of a rough and jagged rocky pass. It seems to be like an enemy opposing one’s movements and seeking one's destruction. Yet the call is constantly made, in the Bible, on believers, to persevere through this straitened passage, and to endure this unpleasant pressure, in the hope of gain from it by God's blessing.

Jesus declares to his followers as he foretells their future: "In the world ye have tribulation [or severe pressure]: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." The assurance to believers, after his resurrection and ascension, was, "that through many tribulations [or distresses] we must enter into the kingdom of God." The apostolic injunction is: "Let us also rejoice in our tribulations [or afflictions]: knowing that tribulation [or straitness] worketh patience; and patience, probation; and probation, hope: and hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us." The idea in these uses of the word translated "tribulation" evidently is that of a God-permitted pressure, that may, by his blessing, work for good. This is the Bible idea; now how is that indicated, or expressed, in the English word "tribulation"?

As to the history and significance of this word, Archbishop Trench says forcefully: "We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the [Church of England] Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to know how it means this, and to question 'tribulation' a little closer. It is derived from the Latin 'tribulum,' which was the threshing instrument or harrow whereby the Roman husbandman separated the corn from the husks, and 'tribulatio' in its primary significance of the act was this separation."

"So far as to the primitive figure of speech. But some Latin writer of the Christian Church appropriated the word and image for the setting forth of a higher truth; and sorrow, distress, and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, he therefore called these sorrows and trials 'tribulations,' - threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner." It is also said, as to this signification: "This deeper religious use of the word 'tribulation' was unknown to classical antiquity, belonging exclusively to the Christian writers."

Trench quotes, in illustration of this truth, the following lines by "George Wither, a prolific versifier, and occasionally a poet, of the seventeenth century."

"Till from the straw the flail the corn doth beat,
Until the chaff be purged from the wheat,
Yea, till the mill the grains in pieces tear,
The richness of the flour will scarce appear.
So, till men's persons great afflictions touch,
If worth be found, their worth is not so much,
Because, like wheat in straw, they have not yet
That value which in threshing they may get.
For till the bruising flails of God's corrections
Have threshed out of us our vain affections;
Till those corrections which do misbecome us
Are by thy sacred Spirit winnowed from us;
Until from us the straw of worldly treasures,
Till all the dusty chaff of empty pleasures,
Yea, till his flail upon us he doth lay,
To thresh the husk of this our flesh away;
And leave the soul uncovered; nay, yet more,
Till God shall make our very spirit poor,
We shall not up to highest wealth aspire;
But then we shall; and that is my desire."

The idea of tribulation, therefore, is that of separation for purposes of cleansing, of purifying, of refining. In this sense it includes, not merely threshing, but winnowing, separating the grain from the husk on the stalk, and again the grain from the chaff of the husk. It includes also the idea of refining by fire, separating the pure metal from the worthless dross; of purifying by water, washing away the sand and loam from the atoms and nuggets of gold; of pressing out the blood of the grape in the wine-press, and the rich oil from the olive in the oil-press. It includes also the process of the parent's or the teacher's rod in chastisement, for purposes of training,- as, indeed, is indicated in the term "thrashing," or "threshing," in the home or the school-room, as a means of discipline; thrashing the bad out of the boy in order to leave the good by itself.

In this view of tribulation it is that we are to rejoice in every process of purifying and separation, by which we are to become spiritually refined and uplifted. It was in this aspect of the mission of the Messiah that John the Baptist proclaimed: "He shall baptize you with [or in] the Holy Spirit and with [or in] fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire."

Tribulation is our normal condition in our present state. Our Saviour promises it to us, while we are in the world; and that promise no follower of his will ever say Jesus has failed to make good. We are all to be under pressure from the flail and the fan and the fire and the press, from the plow and the harrow and the sickle. If we are without tribulation, there is to us no harvest and no garner. We might as well have never lived as to be without the process that separates the good from the bad, the precious from the worthless. God be praised for tribulation and its results!

Nothing that is good shall be harmed in a child of God by the destructive forces of tribulation, whether in the fire, the flood, the gale, or under the flail or the press; but when the refuse has been destroyed, that which is precious shall stand out cleansed and refined in permanent and eternal purity. If we would be at our best for now and forevermore, we must "abhor that which is evil," we must "cleave to that which is good," being "patient in tribulation," while "rejoicing in hope."

When John, in Patmos, had a vision of that which is to come to pass before the final dissolution of the present heavens and the present earth, he saw the angels, and the elders, and the living creatures, all on their faces before the throne, worshipping God. And one of the elders asked him concerning an object of special interest in the great multitude there gathered, whom none could number: "These which are arrayed in white robes, who are they, and whence came they?" John's reverent answer was: "My lord, thou knowest."

Then came the explanation of the wondrous sight: "These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes."

If we would be in that heavenly throng, we must have been in, and must have come out of, great tribulation. It is a mission of tribulation to fit us for that fellowship of the redeemed, and for that loving ministry of God in his eternal presence. In view of this truth, shall we welcome, or shall we shrink from, tribulation as it comes to us, or as we come to it, in the providence of God?

CHAPTER 2. TRIED BY TROUBLES

There are few words of common use that are less understood in their scope and force than the word "trouble." The Bible tells us that "man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" and that "man is born unto trouble, as [surely as] the sparks fly upward." In our ordinary speech we refer to our troubles, and to the troubles of others, with the widest and most varying range of meanings.

Sometimes we speak of being troubled with indigestion or rheumatism; again of being troubled by poor servants, or by house-cleaning and by painters and by dressmakers; again, of our children’s troubles with their playmates or their studies; of a good woman’s trouble with her intemperate husband; of labor troubles, and financial troubles, and political troubles, in the community at large. Yet again we say, in a general way, that a certain man has a great deal of trouble, or that a certain other man seems remarkably free from trouble - perhaps that "he never knew what trouble was." What is included in this term "trouble," that makes it applicable to all these different spheres of personal or social experience?

In the Bible more than twenty different Hebrew words, and a dozen Greek ones, are all rendered by the word "trouble" in our ordinary English version. These words include the idea of labor, pressure, agitation, weariness, fear, sorrow, wickedness, and various kindred emotions and experiences. The root idea of the English word which comprehends them all is: a whirling disturbance; that state of being which makes one whirl round and round instead of standing quietly, or of going straight ahead. That is trouble: to be in such a whirl that you can neither rest composedly nor move forward unwaveringly. Trouble, then, is an effect, and not a cause; it is the inside result rather than the outside pressure; it is a condition of being, instead of the fact of any particular incidents of life.

Trouble is different from tribulation, while it is often associated with it. Tribulation is not in itself trouble. Trouble does not necessarily come with tribulation. One man is troubled without being in tribulation; another man is in tribulation, without being troubled. More than sixty times in the Old Testament the same Hebrew word is interchangeably translated "trouble" and "tribulation." The same process that lacerates and presses may result in the separation of the precious from the worthless, or it may simply cause a mental disturbance and an unsteadiness of being. Just here is where the nature of trouble is liable to be lost sight of; and because of its misconception those about us are misjudged as to the extent and severity of their experiences of trouble.

We say, sometimes, that children know nothing of real trouble. There could hardly be a greater mistake than this. No troubles are more real than children’s troubles - whatever be their cause. Children’s hearts ache, and children’s hearts sometimes break, with their varied troubles. Many a little child has deliberately put an end to his despairing life, because of trouble that was terribly real to him, however trifling its occasion may have seemed to others.

We may sneer at a loss which troubles a child, as perhaps only "a broken toy;" but that toy, with its associations, and with the investiture of his imaginings, may have been a very dear and sacred thing to the child. Can we even say that our standard of values is always superior to the child’s? Do we now put no false estimates on toys? We might call a loss which well-nigh broke our hearts "a shattered idol," instead of "a broken toy;" but the consequent trouble would be no greater, nor would it be any more real, to us, in the one case, than to the child in the other.

After all, it is the childish troubles which are severest to most of us - especially to those who are most sensitive, and hence are capable of keenest suffering. What is it which just now troubles you above all things else? Is it that which the world would say was worthiest of your first thought, and ought to occasion you most anxiety?

And what was it that made you so unhappy, so unfitted you for the practical duties of life, a year ago, and again only last month? Does it seem to you now quite as important as it then appeared? Can you even remember exactly what it was? Whether you can or not, and whatever you think of the reasonableness of it as a cause of trouble to you, you cannot question that your trouble over it was very real at the time-as real as any trouble you ever had, or ever could have. Trouble is none the less real for being childish and unreasonable.

Not what comes to us, but the light in which we look at it, settles the question whether we have trouble over it or not. The coarser-grained man shrugs his shoulders, when he is sharply rebuked by a companion, and says laughingly, "High words break no bones." He is not troubled by anything of that sort. The man of finer grain reads in the countenance of a friend whom he loves and honors a censure of some careless word of his, and his heart is pierced with pain. To him

And he has trouble day and night until that face is bright again. One man loses a few hundred dollars, and it troubles him sorely. Another finds all the slow accumulations of years swept away in an hour, and it brings him no serious sense of loss; yet he is in constant trouble because of his loved son’s misdoing. Is it for either of those men to measure the force of the other’s trouble?

What folly for one of us to say, "That man has no trouble to be compared with mine, because he has no experience that duplicates mine"! What if he is free from such physical pain as racks your frame? Are you sure that he would not rather be in physical pain until the day of his death, than endure the trial of his remorseful memories? What if he seems supplied with all these sources of comfort -n family and property and popular favor - the lack of which is the cause of all your trouble? Can you say that he would not have felt less keenly the death of those dearest to him, and the loss of property and popular favor, than he feels the bitter betrayal of a trusted friend, or the failure to be true and noble on the part of one to whom he had given the highest place in his heart, as a lofty ideal?

Troubles that are slightest often show most prominently, while troubles that are severest are least manifest. The troubles of those who call loudest for sympathy may be troubles that deserve little regard from others. On the other hand, persons who say no word of complaint to their fellows, and who would fain repress every sign of suffering of soul, are perhaps those whose constant cry of heart to God is: "Give us help from trouble; for vain is the help of man."

Ah, how little we can judge of the hidden troubles, past and present, of our fellows, by the calm exterior and the untroubled appearance which they present to us! Troubles that have been met as tribulation, with its true mission to the sufferer, do not leave the appearance of trouble on the outer man. That firm-set face, which seems to show a hard or a cold nature, may represent a constant inner struggle to be frm. That glow of holy beauty, on a countenance that impresses us as saintly, may come from the light of the refiner’s fire which is burning day and night in the heart below. Those cheerful words and smiles, that appear to be only the overflow of a glad and undisturbed heart, may be the rich harvest from seeds which had not been quickened unless they died, and were not fruitful except as they were nourished from hidden graves.

It is this thought that Lucy Larcom phrases so beautifully:-

Or again as Charles Kingsley puts it: "How many sweet and holy souls, who look cheerful enough before the eyes of man, yet have their secret sorrows. They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night; and they will carry it perhaps for years and years, and to their graves, and to the throne of Christ, before they lay it down; and none but they and Christ will ever know what it was." Such souls are in tribulation through their troubles. They are purified by the trial of troubles. Other souls are merely "troubled by their trials. They gain nothing by being sore pressed and disturbed.

Trouble is not on the surface. Trouble is not alike to all. Trouble is not to be measured by one man for another. There is a basis of truth for any one of us in the negro refrain:

Each soul knows its own trouble - and only its own. It is not for us to expect that others can measure our trouble; nor have we the ability or the right to pass upon theirs. We cannot understand the cause or the extent of the whirl in their hearts that makes it seem as if the very foundations of the earth were being swept away; nor can they realize how we can have quite as severe trouble from quite a different cause.

But to them and to us there should be comfort at every such time in the thought that One who fully knows our trouble sympathizes with us in it all most tenderly, and is able and ready to bring us safely through it.

He who knows our trials and troubles, and is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, speaks words of peace to every storm-tossed soul when he says lovingly: "Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me." Believing in Jesus as our Friend, our Saviour, our Life, we have rest and peace in him. We are no longer troubled by our troubles.

CHAPTER 3. TESTED BY FIRE

Some of the best things in the world are the results of fire processes, or are proof against the destroying power of fire. Diamonds among gems, and granite among rocks, were called into being by the processes of fire. Gold and silver, for which so many are ready to sell their lives and souls, are indestructible in the trial by fire. Character, which is worth more than silver and gold and diamonds, and which is firmer and more durable than granite, cannot be at its best without fire-testing, and it is proof against fire.

Men have recognized in fire a symbol of Deity, and have bowed before it in reverent worship, because of its power to give warmth and life in the universe. Yet the destructive power of fire is terrible, and men shrink from it in dread. The cry of "Fire!" arousing one from his sleep at night, in his home on the land, or in a vessel in mid-ocean, strikes terror to the stoutest heart; and he who looks at the smoking ruins of a great city swept away by the flames in a few brief hours, shrinks from the thought that "the fire itself shall prove each man’s work of what sort it is."

But fire is not wholly destructive. Fire is one form of tribulation. Its testing power is a separating power. It purifies and refines while it seems to consume; and that which comes through the flames unharmed, is worth all the more for its freedom from that which fire could burn away. The promises of God to his children who are brought to the test of fire in the furnace of affliction and suffering, are, in themselves, with all their words of comfort and peace, a suggestion of the truth that those whom God loves most dearly shall have their tribulation in the midst of the flames.

God does not say to the child of his love, "Thou shalt never be put to the test of fire;" but he does say, "When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." It was the three men who were true to God in the midst of an idolatrous people, whom God permitted to be bound hand and foot and cast into a burning fiery furnace, in the plain of Dura. Those loved ones of God were not kept out of the flames, but they were kept while in the flames. The fire loosed and burned away their bonds, and they walked in freedom in the midst of the fire, and had no hurt; and there walked, in loving companionship with them, one whose aspect was of heavenly form and bearing.

Those men must, in their very natures, have had a shrinking from the test of fire; and they may have wondered why God permitted them to be called to it. But when they were in the midst of the flames, because they would not shirk their duty, they had such rest and peace there as they could have found nowhere else in the universe; and when they emerged from the furnace, it was found that "the fire had no power upon their bodies, nor was the hair of their head singed." And it has been the same with God’s dear children ever since that day. Often those who love God and whom God loves are called to serve God in the burning fiery furnace; and however they may shrink from entering the flames, they find rest and peace in the fire’s center. As Miss Havergal reminds us:

Let us joy, therefore, as we enter the furnace of trial, in the thought that we can be nearer to God in the center of the flame than we could be in the open air on a bed of roses!

Every child of God, in appreciation of this truth, can say, with Julius Sturm, as he feels the fiercest heat of this furnace flame:

The choicest treasures of personal character are wrought out and manifested by means of the furnace fires of pain and suffering. Those who help us in times of our fiery trial are those who have themselves been helped in and by the fire. Much has been purged out of their natures, and that which remains is more valuable because of the loss.

As Bushnell says, of those on whom the flames of suffering have been doing their work: "It will be seen that in all cases of long-continued and very severe suffering, there is a look of gentled, perhaps we should say broken, feeling. The gait is softer, the motions less abrupt, and there is a lingering moan, we fancy, in the voice, and a certain dewy tremor of tear in the eye. It is as if the man's wilfulness had been fined, or at least partly broken. He may be a personal stranger, yet we see by all his demonstrations that he has come out of the fire, and is tempered to the sway of many things he cannot resist. Thus it is that a great many of the best and holiest examples of piety are such as have been fined and finished in the crucible of pain."

Yet it is not a weakened or a merely passive nature that is thus gentled and subdued. Only a strong nature can stand the fiery trial successfully, and right endurance is far more than mere submission. As Bushnell says, again: "Passivity is not the true lesson; for a bulrush bowing to the wind could take that lesson as well. Neither is it to brace up all our force in a tough strain of stoical energy, refusing to feel. But it is to set our whole activity quietly, manfully, down upon the having learned well what our fiery teacher will show us. To wade through months of pain, to spin out years of weariness and storm, can be done triumphantly only by such as can resolutely welcome the discipline their nature wants. And the man or woman who has learned to suffer well has gotten the highest of mortal victories."

A keen observer of character can say, with Miss Procter, of the signs of the refining fire upon any one of us:

How the Apostle's words of comfort, in view of this truth, come home to those of us who are in the furnace of trial just now! "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy." "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temptations, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, might be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

There is comfort, even beyond the thought of the refining power of the furnace over the gold by its separation from the debasing dross. The very dross and ashes and slag of the furnace may, through the skill of the chemist, become a means of beauty, or of cleansing, or of fertilizing, and thus of life. Out of the slag of the iron-furnaces in the Basic process steel works, there is manufactured an odorless phosphate which is claimed to be of exceptional value as a fertilizer. As its enthusiastic discoverers claim: "The odorless phosphate makes plump wheat, full ears of corn, solid oranges, juicy peaches, and fills all the fruit with luscious, delicately flavored juices that are peculiar to its odorless character. It is odorless as wood ashes, pure as mountain water, healthy as a sunbeam, a quick and vigorous fertilizer." Ashes enter largely into the composition of cleansing soaps, and a brilliant diamond has been brought into being out of intensified charcoal.

So, also, in the spiritual furnace, even though there be no residuum of pure gold as an outcome of the fire-testing process when we are subjected to it, the very dross of our natures may, by the power of the divine Chemist, be made a means of service to others in the Lord's earthly domain. Our characters, when thus tested, may fail to show that strength and vigor and preciousness which command admiration and inspire courage on the part of those who observe us. Yet if we accept the furnace as the place in which we are to serve and honor our Master, the spirit displayed by us, even in our weakness and failure, may be a means of enriching other lives more precious than our own. "The base things of the world, and the things that are despised," doth "God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that he might bring to nought the things that are," and that he might secure a blessing to all.

When we find ourselves in the furnace of trial, as sooner or later we are sure to, even if we are not already there, let us understand that the furnace is the best place for us, and that its fires are for our testing. If there is gold in our characters, that gold will come forth refined. If there is in us nothing but dross, that very dross may be made a means of fuller life to others, when we have seemed to fail. "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace," or to use us for his honor as our lives pass away in the flames.

CHAPTER 4. BY PRUNING AND PRESSING

In Oriental thought the vine is a symbol of fruitful life. The palm needs to be planted near living waters, and the olive gives much of its strength to wood and leaf. But the vine can gain sustenance on the rocky hillside, while its whole being goes out in its fruitage. It is through many tribulations that the fruit of the vine comes to perfection; and it finds its value under pruning and pressing.

The "fruit of the vine" is more than wine; it is a synonym of outpoured life. "Life" and "blood" are interchangeable words in the sacred record, and the "blood of the grape," as "the fruit of the vine," is the "life" of the vine and the grape. From time immemorial men have covenanted with one another by drinking one another's blood, or by drinking together from a common cup of "the blood of the grape," or "the fruit of the vine."

When, therefore, our Lord gave to his disciples of "this fruit of the vine" as his very "blood" he made them partakers of his very life. And when he told them that he was "the true vine," and they were "the branches," and that their value was measured by their fruit-bearing power, he taught them the truth of truths concerning spiritual life and Christian service, and the gain of improved tribulation.

As branches of the true vine we must be constant fruit-bearers, or we have no right to draw nourishment from the parent stock. And the fruit we bear is not for ourselves, but for others. Only as we give of our lives are we entitled to live. As W M.L. Jay reminds every one of us:

And we cannot give of our life's blood to others except through suffering. Hence, to be a living disciple of Jesus is to be unceasingly a sufferer in the service of Jesus.

Ugo Bassi's famous sermon in the hospital, on "The Vine and its Branches," has the lesson for us all from the teachings of our Lord, in his assignment to us of our place and our service.

If we share with Christ in "the fruit of the vine," we must be "partakers of Christ's sufferings;" and we can be glad accordingly "with exceeding joy." The "fruit of the vine" is outpoured life, and he who bears much fruit must suffer much. "Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God," as sharers of the life of the True Vine.

CHAPTER 5. IMPROVING CHASTISEMENT

"Chastisement" is not a pleasant word, any more than tribulation, as we are accustomed to think of it and to use it. Chastisement is ordinarily connected in our minds with the idea of displeasure and severity on the part of him who employs it, and with suffering and recoil on the part of him who is its subject. It is, indeed, not altogether separated in our thoughts from the idea of punishment for transgression, an idea in which the element of justice is far more prominent than that of love.

We speak of ourselves or of others as being "sorely chastened," and there is a suggestion in our tone, at such a time, of a call for pity on behalf of the chastened one. We are all of us ready to agree with the Apostle so far as to say, "All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous;" and he who is least subject to chastening is, in our ordinary thought, most highly favored of God.

Yet "chastisement" is, in its root-idea, "correction" as a means of improvement. It is akin to instruction and guidance and training. It is, indeed, a phase of tribulation, for the purpose of refining and purifying. It represents the work of the father, the teacher, the trainer, the guide. Only because he who trains and guides must persistently correct the errors of him whom he has in charge, does the idea of chastisement become coincident in our minds with the idea of severity on the part of him who administers it, and with recoil on the part of him to whom it is administered.

In primitive thought the "rod" is a symbol of authority, and its use is synonymous with punishment; but, with improved conceptions of parental authority and government, the use of the rod is recognized as for the loving guidance and control in the correct way of the one under training. The rod, like the flail, is designed to beat out, or to thresh out, the evil and the worthless from the good and the precious. Hence chastisement is looked upon by us as something to be dreaded or as something to be welcomed, as something to be endured with patience or as something to be rejoiced over in gladness, according as we perceive the immediate discomfort of it to ourselves, or the wisdom and love of its prompting.

It makes all the difference in the world whether we look at the bitter mixture which our physician prescribes for us in a critical hour of disease, or at the loving physician who prescribes it as a means of our rescue from death and our help toward health; at the hard lessons set us by the teacher in our early school-days, or at the wise and considerate teacher who is seeking thereby to develop and train our minds into the fullest exercise of their best powers; at the corrections and denials that come to us from a watchful parent, or at the devoted parent to whom we are dear as life itself, and who is thus evidencing his unfailing affection and his purpose of our completest training. So, also, it makes all the difference in the world whether we look at our providential chastisements as chastisements, or at the loving Father who is proving his love by these chastisements.

If we look at the chastening, it seemeth to be "not joyous, but grievous." If we look at God as our loving Father, we can be sure that whatever he sends to us is the best thing possible for us; and therefore his chastenings are to be welcomed as afresh proof of his affection. Thus it is that Eliphaz, one of the friends of Job, says:

Thus it is that Solomon approves the proverbial injunction:

And thus it is that the Apostle expands and re-emphasizes this truth of the ages: "God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not? ... We had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

Chastening improved is a means of spiritual cultivation and refinement. Why, then, should we speak of a man as "sorely chastened," when we would not speak of him as "sorely cultivated," or as "sorely refined"? It is not because the primitive idea of "chastisement" suggests a more painful process than that of "cultivation," which includes the tearing up of the surface with the plowshare, or than that of "refinement," with its thought of being cast into the furnace of fire; but it is rather because in the case of "refinement" and of "cultivation" we think of the satisfactory results of the process, through its improving, while in the case of "chastisement" we center our thoughts on the process itself.

Here is where we wrong our loving Father, when we give the chief place in our minds to the chastisements which he sends to us in love, instead of thinking of the end that he lovingly has in view in his sending those chastisements upon us, or yet better of him who has sent them as evidences of his love.

There is a lesson to us all in the teachings, on this point, of Rabia, a Muhammadan saint of a thousand years ago. James Freeman Clarke has translated that lesson from the Persian, through the German of Tholuck:

As a matter of fact, we give quite to chastisements as chastisements in our Father's dealings with us. We take it upon ourselves to divide our experiences into two great classes, - of blessings and chastisements, - when in reality all chastisements are in themselves blessings, while, in a larger sense, all blessings are chastisements. We are often inclined to pride ourselves on enduring chastisements bravely; and if, forsooth, we come to rejoice in chastisements as surely sent for our good, we think that we have made highest attainment in grace, whereas it ought to be so that the transcendent love of our Father should cause us to lose sight of all distinctions between those of his ways that please us and those that give us discomfort.

It is well for us when we can say, while wincing under providential chastisements: "Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him." It is better when we are so far along toward the right that our heart-cry in the very valley of death's shade can be, "Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." It is best of all when our thoughts are so full of the loving Father himself that our grateful words spring forth: "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth." "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." The submission of self to God is good; the glad surrender of self to God is better; the utter forgetfulness of self in the soul-filling thought of God is best of all.

How unfair it would be for a son to tell others of the trials to which his loving father's course had subjected him, and of his fidelity in enduring them all! Nor would it materially better the case if the son were all the time telling of the various reproofs and corrections he had had from his father, even though he admitted that all these had proved of benefit to him. A true son of a true father is so full of thought of his loving father as a loving father, that his mind cannot be dwelling on the unpleasant phases of his experience as the recipient of that father's love.

So ought it to be with every child of the All Father; the glad thought of the Father himself is the cause of rejoicing above all memory of any special way of the Father that has caused temporary sadness or gladness. Who of us shall repine because of his Father's chastenings? Who, indeed, shall even rejoice because of those chastenings, in comparison with his rejoicing in the thought of the Father who has sent them in wisdom and love? Let every one of us, on the contrary, so improve his chastenings that he may be ready to say to that Father:

CHAPTER 6. SUFFERING AS A DUTY

What is "suffering"? "Suffer" is from the Latin sub, "under," and fero, "to bear;" "to bear under." "To suffer" means variously, "to feel or bear what is painful, disagreeable, or distressing;" "to undergo," "to endure without sinking," "to support bravely or unflinchingly;" "to sustain; not to sink under." "Suffering" is the act or condition of enduring. The root-idea of "suffering" is, that the sufferer is underneath, and the burden is on him. To suffer is to continue underneath, instead of slipping out from under; to endure as a bearer of the distressing burden, instead of shirking or evading the disagreeable task of its bearing.

Suffering is never, in itself, desirable. No phase of tribulation is in itself attractive, and suffering is reckoned as one phase of tribulation. Suffering by its very nature forbids the possibility of its being attractive. The constant temptation of a sufferer is, to be rid of his suffering if he can be; and the inevitable inclination of one who is not a sufferer, is to avoid assuming any proffered burden which is sure to prove a cause of suffering. Yet suffering is often a duty; its seeking is often the only course of right to a person; and its endurance is often the test of one's manhood, or one's womanhood. The discomforts of suffering need no emphasis to any son or daughter of Adam. The duty of suffering is not sufficiently apprehended even by many a disciple of Him who was made "perfect through sufferings."

A longing for ease and repose is of man's innermost nature. The desire to escape from suffering is as instinctive as the love of life. The cry of "the sweet psalmist of Israel," in his hour of trial, is the cry of every pain-tried soul:

And there is no invitation of David's Greater Son which is fuller of comfort and hope than his assuring words: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Rest is promised, even if it be not yet attained. In the thought of this assurance, every believing soul joins with the Apostle in his ejaculation: "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it."

But just what this divinely promised rest is, and when it is to be attained to, is a question about which different minds have very different understandings. The commoner thought is, that the rest which one has a right to seek after, and to delight in, is an absolute freedom from trial and pain; exemption from suffering, even if at the cost of exemption from feeling.

the poet sings. And in his imagining of calm:

The form of religion which even to-day is perhaps accepted by more persons than are believers in any other one form of religion, has its very basis on the assumption that the chiefest desire of the human soul is, and should be, an escape from "suffering," and that as suffering is inseparable from consciousness, therefore an end of consciousness is the soul's highest hope. Thus the Booddhists, who include one-third or more of the human race, have, as their conception of the heavenly state, an unconscious and an eternally dreamless repose, which they call Nirwana. Only thus and there, as they consider it, can it be truly said of any soul:

Only of those who are in that state can they conceive it as being said truly: "Blessed are the dead, ... that they may rest from their labors." And there is no little similarity between the innermost thought of many of the ease-lovers in the realms of Christianity, and the many more ease-lovers who are in the domain of Booddhism.

Whatever may be the longing of the natural heart, and whatever may be the teachings of the most widely popular of false religions, in the direction of a selfish ease-giving rest, the whole spirit of the gospel of Jesus breathes of the gain, and of the duty, of suffering; while all the gospel precepts and all the gospel illustrations in this sphere indicate that the "rest" which is given on earth to the Christian believer is a rest while in suffering, rather than a rest from suffering. "It behooved Christ to suffer;" "leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps." And "as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings," even "so also are ye [partakers] of the comfort" which is in and from Christ, in his triumph over evil.

He who promises "rest" to all who will come to him, promises them "tribulation" also; and with tribulation there comes suffering. Christ's conditional promise of eternal rest is, "He that endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved." Contentment and endurance in suffering are the privilege and the duty of every true disciple of Jesus.

As are the teachings of the gospel of Jesus, so are the teachings of the highest and noblest experiences of the children of men. There is a gain in suffering. True rest is not in unthinking ease. Only through prolonged endurance is there any real attainment of a worthy soul-enjoyment. God sends us no gift with choicer possibilities in it than are enwrapped in suffering:

The rest which best refreshes the sufferer is the rest of a worthy purpose in suffering.

True manhood will not cease, nor desire to cease, from continued and progressive action, at whatever cost that action must be maintained. True manhood is virtue. Virtue cannot be selfishly dormant.

Without conflict, endurance, and triumph there is no high development of personal being. Undisturbed ease cannot secure a sturdy and vigorous manhood. Sainthood attained through triumph over evil is more than angelic life that never experienced moral gain by battlings with sin. A saved soul has joy that can never be known by a soul that was not in peril from the archenemy of souls. As Miss Hamilton says:

Even among the Booddhists, there are millions upon millions who recognize the low selfishness of a soul's desire to find repose in an unconscious isolation of useless being, while "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain," with a need of sympathy and help in endurance; and the very theogony of Booddhism has been, in certain regions, revised, to meet the higher and nobler conception of a more generous spirit, and a worthier aim of existence.

Among the Chinese, many years ago, the Booddhists brought forward a new divinity, "whose highest merit was that, having reached the edge of Nirwana, she declined to enter, preferring to remain where she could hear the cries, and succor the calamities, of those who were struggling with the manifold evils of a world of change." When the repose of an unconscious oblivion was already before her, she chose to suffer on in sympathy and in unselfish endeavor, in order to be a blessing to others, rather than to find an ignoble personal relief in the neglect of duty to other sufferers. "Tsz-pei Kwan-yin," she is called, or "the merciful goddess who hears the prayers -of sufferers.

In the temples of China the image of Kwan-yin finds a place, where "she is represented with a thousand hands ready to succor human suffering;" or, again, as holding in her arms a little babe, as illustrative of the mother-spirit of unselfish tenderness. And there is a lesson for us in this imperfect suggestion from Booddhism, which corresponds with the more beautiful exhibit of its truth in the gospel of Jesus; a lesson of the duty of suffering on for the sake of others, as well as for our own sakes, even when the choice would seem to be ours of an escape from suffering, into a selfish and an undisturbed repose.

The Booddhistic idea of suffering, as something essentially and always evil, and as something to be evaded at any and every cost, has quite too much tolerance in the minds of many who call themselves Christians. The comfort of a halfway " Nir-wana" has its selfish attractions to not a few who are fully familiar with the teachings of the gospel of Jesus.

The man who commits suicide because he is tired of his sufferings, is a selfish and cowardly shirker of his plain duty of continued endurance in those sufferings. He who takes to drink to drown his sorrows, is similarly unfaithful in his duty of suffering. The husband or the wife who seeks a sundering of the marital tie, merely because every breath of that married life is another breath of suffering, is unmistakably faithless to the promised duty of being true, in better or in worse, until death itself should part that twain-one. So, again, with parent and child, with teacher and scholar, with friend and friend. How common it is to hear, as a proffered excuse for an abandonment of endurance in that sphere, that endurance there is a cause of constant suffering!

There can even be found those who count themselves true men, who will shamelessly tell of their turning away in selfishness from wife or child in some hour of their loved one's personal pain, because they "never could endure the suffering of such an hour." And, again, there are selfish women who say that they are ready to give money for the sick or the poor, but they cannot visit personally in the homes of suffering, because that would cause them suffering. The Booddhistic "Kwan-yin" may, if she will, remain in the realm of suffering, and may use her thousand hands in a ministry of sympathy and of relief; but these so-called Christian disciples would selfishly plunge into the oblivion of Nirwana, in order to shirk their appointed duty of suffering.

Ought Chinese Booddhism to have such a seeming advantage as this over any phase of our more exalted Christianity?

CHAPTER 7. STRUGGLING TO LIVE

Death, and not life, is the order of nature. Any person or thing that lives, lives in spite of the mere "laws of nature." Life is supernatural, rather than natural. Only as a power or a force additional to and above mere material nature is continually operative against the "laws" of that nature, does life, as life, exist. Life is an observed fact in the universe; but life is not the result of any known "law of nature," nor is its origin or source to be accounted for by the operation of any such law. The existence and the continuance of life is extra-natural, or supernatural, and involves an incessant struggle with and mastery of the "laws of nature."

It is much the same in the realms of the physical, of the intellectual, and of the spiritual life. In the lower order of physical nature, as in the higher order of spiritual nature, the beginning of life is the introduction of an element that cannot be accounted for by the operation of any known law of nature; and the progress of life in all its forms and phases is in opposition to and in subjugation of the forces that were before operative in the realm of matter.

"Biology," or the science of life, recognizes the existence of life as a fact which it is unable to account for; and it deals with the method of life's workings, rather than with life's source and origin. That which biology begins with as a recognized but an unaccountable fact in nature, is an extra-natural or supernatural force in the universe, which exists by bringing into subjection and ministry the workings of the recognized laws of nature as apart from that force.

The very earliest forms of vegetable life, in the lichen and the fern, exhibit an element of aspiration, working against the general law of gravitation, and making subservient to its purposes inert matter of various kinds,- thereby changing the order and direction of material nature. And this process goes on all the way along in the vegetable world, until its illustration is found in the uprearing of the lofty oak by means of this supernatural force of life, which lifts the nourishing sap to the extent of forty-five pounds to a square inch in every hundred feet of elevation, in defiance of the attraction of gravitation and of the oppositions of the wind and the rain, save as they are made tributary to this aspiring supernatural force in the universe. Up toward the light and the sky, away from the darkness, the rock, and the mud, vegetable life aspires, and will not be held back and down.

With animal life the element of volition is added to that of aspiration in the constant struggle against the general laws of nature. Sentient life not only aspires, but wills to bring into subjection to its use that. which would otherwise bar its progress or forbid its existence. The bird selects the material for its nest, and carries it up to a chosen spot in defiance of the law of gravitation, arranging it there in such a way as to guard it from the destructive sweep of the winds, and from the immediate operation of tendencies to decay, while planning for the reproduction and continued preservation of life in the realm of bird nature. The beaver deliberately wills to check the growth of a selected tree, and to use a portion of it for the stoppage of the waters in their flow, and for the making of a home for itself and its offspring.

In every phase of animal life there is a struggle for the mastery over lower forms of life, in order to maintain its own existence, and to make progress in the line of its volitions; and only as life consents to battle and subdue the forces of mere nature, can it fulfil its mission or be true to its best aspirations.

It is nature's business to destroy life; and the world of nature does not owe a living to any person or thing. It is life's business to fight in order to live; and unless life can subdue nature, and hold it in subjection, it will come into bondage to nature; and the bondage of nature is death. All life is a ceaseless struggle, and where there is no struggle there is no real life.

The highest form of life is spiritual life; and in this realm, as in the lower realms, the laws of nature which are operative in the universe tend to hold down, and to pull back, and to retard, and to destroy; and only as spiritual life will struggle for the mastery of all opposing forces, and make them tributary to its aspiring volitions, can it make progress, or even continue to exist. Spiritual life is not an evolution in the order of nature's development, but it is a gift to man from the Source of all life. He who is a possessor of spiritual life as a supernatural force, has power for the battling and the overcoming of all the opposings of nature in the physical, the intellectual, and the moral realms; but if he ceases to battle, he ceases to overcome, and he is already succumbing to death as the constant enemy of life. In the old Egyptian "Book of the Dead," lost souls are spoken of as the "Children of Failure;" and any soul that will not struggle in spiritual life to final success, is simply a child of failure. Living is inseparable from struggling. To cease struggling is to cease living.

Struggling to live is the primal form of tribulation assured in this world to every child of God and follower of Jesus. The obstacles to peaceful life which beset us continually on every side, pressing in upon us to impede our progress and to give us distress and anguish as we move forward, are inevitably incident to our human existence in a world below the highest plane of life eternal. We should never wonder at the call here below to this struggle to live. We should rather welcome it as an earnest of our progress upward and of our final triumph over death. The thought of every one of us can be with Isaac Watts, in this ceaseless struggle to live in the midst of our tribulations.