by Octavius Winslow, D.D.
“Sweet are the uses of adversity” to an heir of heaven. Its form may appear “ugly and venomous” — for “no chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous;” but nevertheless it “bears a precious jewel in its head” — for “afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Affliction is to the believer what the wing is to the lark, and what the eye is to the eagle — the means by which the soul mounts in praise heavenward, gazing closely and steadily upon the glorious Sun of righteousness. Chastening seals our sonship, sorrow disciplines the heart, affliction propels the soul onward. We should have a more vivid conception of the power of affliction as an ingredient of holiness, if we kept more constantly in remembrance the fact that all the afflictive, trying dispensations of the believer are covenant dispensations — that they are not of the same character, nor do they produce the same results, as in the ungodly. They are among the “sure mercies of David”. In the case of the unregenerate, all afflictions are a part and parcel of the curse, and work naturally against their good; but in the case of the regenerate, they are, in virtue of the covenant of grace, transformed into blessings, and work spiritually for their good. Just as the mountain stream, coursing its way, meets some sanative mineral by which it becomes endowed with a healing property, so afflictions, passing through the covenant, change their character, derive a sanctifying property, and thus become a healing medicine to the soul.
Thus we find tribulation the ancient and beaten path of the Church of God. “A great cloud of witnesses” all testify to sorrow as the ordained path to heaven. Both Christ and His apostles gently forewarned the saints that “in the world they should have tribulation”, and that it was “through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God”. Here may be descried the trail of the flock, and, yet more deeply and visibly imprinted, the footsteps of the Great Shepherd of the sheep, “leaving us an example that we should follow His steps”. Who, then, with Christ in his heart, the hope of glory, would wish exemption from what is common to the whole Church of God? Who would not sail to glory in the same vessel with Jesus and His disciples, tossed though that vessel be amidst the surging waves of life’s troubled ocean? All shall arrive in heaven at last, “some on boards, some on broken pieces of the ship, but all safe to land”. It is not necessary, beloved reader, that in a chapter devoted to an exposition of the blessings which flow from sanctified trial, we enumerate all, or even any, of the varied forms which trial assumes. The truth with which we have now to do is the impetus trial gives to the soul heavenward — the friendly hand it outstretches to assist the Christian pilgrim to his shrine, the traveller to his journey’s end, the child to his Father’s house. Our first remark, then, with regard to trial is, that it is a time of spiritual instruction, and so a help heavenward. It is not blindly, but intelligently, that we walk in the ways of the Lord, and are travelling home to God. Great stress is laid by the Holy Ghost in the writings of the apostle upon the believer’s advance in spiritual knowledge. In his prayer for the Ephesian saints he asks for them, that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened. In another place he exhorted the saints to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ”. In his own personal experience he sets no limit to his spiritual knowledge: “that I might know Christ”, was the great aspiration of his soul, and he “counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord”. Now, the school of trial is the school of spiritual knowledge. We grow in a knowledge of ourselves, learning more of our superficial attainments, shallow experience, and limited grace. We learn, too, more of our weakness, emptiness, and vileness, the ploughshare of trial penetrating deep into the heart, and throwing up its vailed iniquity. And oh! how does this deeper self-knowledge lay us low, humble and abase us; and when our self-sufficiency, and our self-seeking, and our self-glorying is thus mowed down, then the showers of the Saviour’s grace descend “as rain upon the mown grass”, and so we advance in knowledge and holiness heavenward. Trial, too, increases our acquaintance with Christ. We know more of the Lord Jesus through one sanctified affliction than by all the treatises the human pen ever wrote. Christ is only savingly known, as He is known personally and experimentally. Books cannot teach Him, sermons cannot teach Him, lectures cannot teach Him; they may aid our information and correct our views, but to know Him as He is, and as we ought, we must have personal dealings with Him. Our sins must bring us to His blood, our condemnation must bring us to His righteousness, our corruptions must bring us to His grace, our wants must bring us to His fulness, our weakness must bring us to His strength, our sorrow must bring us to His sympathy, and His own loveliness and love must attract us to Himself. And oh, in one hour, in a single transaction, in a lone sorrow, which has brought us to Jesus, who can estimate how rapidly and to what an extent we have grown in a knowledge of His person and work, His character and love? I need not enlarge upon other branches of spiritual knowledge which trial promotes — how it increases our personal intimacy with God as our loving Father and Friend; and how it opens our understanding to discern the deep things of God in the Scriptures, so that the Bible in the hour of affliction appears like a new revelation to us. Oh yes, times of trial are times of growth in experimental knowledge. We see God, and Jesus, and truth from new stand-points, and in a different light; and we thank the Lord for the storm which dispelled the mist that hid all this glory, unveiling so lovely a landscape and so serene a sky to our view. Beloved, is the Lord now bringing your religion to the touchstone of trial, testing your experience and knowledge and faith in the crucible? Be calm in the assurance that He but designs your advance in an experimental acquaintance with Himself, and His Gospel, and that you shall emerge from it testifying, “I have seen more of my own vileness, and known more of Jesus, have penetrated deeper into the heart of God, have a clearer understanding of revealed truth, and have learned more of the mysteries of the divine life, on this bed of sickness, in this time of bereaved sorrow, in this dark cloud that has overshadowed me, than in all my life before.” “Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of Thy law.” Oh yes, we learn God’s power to support, His wisdom to guide, His love to comfort us, in a degree we could not have learned but in the way of trial!
Trial quickens us in prayer, and so effectually helps us heavenward. The life of God in the soul on earth is a life of communion of the soul with God in heaven. Prayer is nothing less than the Divine nature in fellowship with the Divine, the renewed creature in communion with God. And it would be as impossible for a regenerate soul to live without prayer, as for the natural life to exist without breathing. And oh, what a sacred and precious privilege is this! — is there one to be compared with it? When we have closed the door — for we speak now of that most solemn and holy habit of prayer, private communion — and have shut out the world, and the creature, and even the saints, and are closeted in personal, solemn, and confiding audience with God, what words can portray the preciousness and solemnity of that hour! Then is guilt confessed, and backslidings deplored, and care unburdened, and sorrow unveiled, and pardon sought, and grace implored, and blessings invoked, in all the filial trustfulness of a child unbosoming itself in the very depths of a father’s love, pity, and succour. But precious and costly as is this privilege of prayer, we need rousing to its observance. Trial is eminently instrumental of this. God often sends affliction for the accomplishment of this one end — that we might be stirred up to take hold of Him. “Lord, in trouble have they visited Thee, they poured out a prayer when Thy chastening was upon them,” To whom in sorrow do we turn, to whom is difficulty do we repair, to whom in want do we fly, but to the Lord? If in prosperity we have “grown fat and kicked”, if when the sun has shone upon us we have walked independently and proudly and distantly, now that affliction has overtaken us we are humbled and prostrate at His feet; retrace our steps, return to God, and find a new impulse given to, and a new power and meetness and soothing in, communion with God. Be assured of this, my reader, there is no help heavenward like unto prayer. There is no ladder the rounds of which will bring you so near to God, there are no wings the plumage of which will waft you so close to heaven, as prayer. The moment you have unpinioned your soul for communion with God, — let your pressure, your sorrow, your sin be what it may, — that moment your heart has quitted earth, and is on its way heavenward. You are soaring above the region of sorrow and battle and sin, and your spirit is expatiating beneath a purer, happier, sunnier sky. Oh the soothing, the strengthening, the uplifting found in prayer beneath the cross! Thus trial helps us heavenward by quickening us to devotion, by stirring us up to closeness of walk. Child of God! want you speedier advance heavenward? Seek it in closer converse with God. Oh, what mighty power has prayer! It has controlled the elements of nature, has stopped the sun in its course, has stayed the arm of God! A man mighty in the prayer of faith is clothed with an invincible panoply, is in possession of a force which Omnipotence cannot resist, for he has “power with God, and prevails.” Oh, turn your difficulty into prayer, turn your sorrow into prayer, turn your want into prayer, turn your very sins and backsliding into confession, supplication, and prayer, and on its wing your soul shall rise to a region of thought and feeling and fellowship close to the very gates of heaven. Lord, we thank Thee for the sacred privilege of prayer, — we thank Thee for the mercy-seat, sprinkled with blood, the place of prayer, — we thank Thee for Jesus’ precious name, our only plea in prayer, — we thank Thee for the divine grace of prayer, — and not less, Lord, do we praise Thee for the trial, the suffering, the sorrow which stimulates our languid spirit, and wakes our dormant heart to the holy, earnest exercise of prayer!
Trials are necessary to wean us from the world. Perhaps nothing possesses so detaching, divorcing an effect in the experience of the Christian as affliction. The world is a great snare to the child of God. Its rank is a snare, its possessions are a snare, its honours are a snare, its enterprises are a snare, the very duties and engagements of daily life are a snare, to a soul whose citizenship is in heaven, and whose heart would fain be more frequently and exclusively where Jesus, its treasure is. Oh, how the things that are seen vail the things that are not seen! — how do things temporal banish from our thoughts and affections and desires the things that are eternal! Why does the sun appear so small an orb, so minute a speck, to our eye? Simply because of its remote distance. Oh, is it not thus that Christ with His surpassing loveliness, and heaven with its winning attractions, and eternal things with their profound solemnity, and communion with God in Christ, so soothing and precious, are objects so dim and superficial, just because we, of the earth earthy, live at so great a distance from God, and allow the influence of the world an ascendancy over us so supreme and absorbing? But God in wisdom and mercy sends us trial to detach us from earth, to lessen our worldly-mindedness, more deeply to convince us how empty and insufficient is all created good when His chastening is upon us, to intensify our affection for spiritual things, and to bring our souls nearer to Himself. “Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer” (Prov. xxv. 4). “I will turn My hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin” (Isa. i. 25). Oh, when the heart is chastened and subdued by sorrow, when the soul is smitten and humbled by adversity, when death bereaves, or sickness invades, or resources narrow, or calamity in one of its many crushing forms lights heavily upon us, how solemn, earnest, and distinct is the voice of our ascended Redeemer, “If ye be risen with Me, seek those things which are above, where I sit at the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. I am your Treasure, your Portion, your All. Sharers of My resurrection-life, you are partakers of its holy, quickening power, and its heaven-bestowing blessings. Soon to be with Me in glory, let your heart travel thitherward, and in its loosenings from earth, its divorcements from the creature, cultivate the mind of My holy apostle, who desired to depart and be with Me.” Oh that to this touching appeal our hearts may respond, “Lord, whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. Thou hast stricken and wounded and laid me low, but Thou wilt comfort, heal, and raise me up again. Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee; yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments. Let this trial detach me from the world, wean me from my idols, transfer my heart to Thee, and speed my soul with a quicker step heavenward.” Thus the heart, crusted by the continuous influence of earthly things, is mellowed by sorrow, through the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost; and then the word becomes more fruitful, and the Lord Jesus growing more precious, and conformity to God more promoted, earth recedes and heaven approaches, and we exclaim, in the words of the Psalmist, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes.” Thus, “afflictions are God’s most effectual means to keep us from losing our way to our heavenly rest. Without this hedge of thorns on the right hand and on the left, we should hardly keep the way to heaven. If there be but one gap open, how ready are we to find it and turn out at it! When we grow wanton, or worldly, or proud, how doth sickness or other afflictions reduce us! Every Christian, as well as Luther, can call affliction one of his best school-masters; and with David may say, ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word.’ Many thousand rescued sinners may cry, O healthful sickness! O comfortable sorrow! O gainful losses! O enriching poverty! O blessed day that ever I was afflicted! Not only the green pastures and still waters, but the rod and staff, they comfort us. Though the word and the Spirit do the main work, yet suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that the word hath easier entrance.”