John Newton
I have often preached to others of the benefit of affliction; but my own path for many years has been so smooth and my trials, though I have not been without trials, have been comparatively so light and few, that I have seemed to myself to speak by rote upon a subject of which I did not have a proper feeling. Yet the many exercises of my poor, afflicted people, and the sympathy the Lord has given me with them in their troubles, have made this a frequent and favourite topic of my ministry among them. The advantages of afflictions, when the Lord is pleased to use them for the good of His people, are many and great. Permit me to mention a few of them; and the Lord grant that we may all find those blessed ends answered in ourselves, by the trials He is pleased to appoint us.
Afflictions quicken us to prayer. It is a pity that it should be so; but experience testifies that a long course of ease and prosperity, without painful changes, has an unhappy tendency to make us cold and formal in our secret worship. But troubles arouse our spirits and constrain us to call upon the Lord in good earnest when we feel a need of that help which we can only have from Him. They are useful, and in a degree necessary, to keep alive in us a conviction of the vanity and unsatisfying nature of the present world and all its enjoyments, to remind us that this is not our rest, and to call our thoughts upward, where our true treasure is and where our conversation ought to be.
When things go on much as we wish, our hearts are too prone to say, It is good to be here. It is probable that if, when Moses came to call Israel to Canaan, he found them in prosperity, as in the days of Joseph, they would have been very unwilling to leave; but the afflictions they had previously been brought into made his message welcome. Thus the Lord, by pain, sickness and disappointments, by breaking our cisterns and withering our gourds, weakens our attachment to this world and makes the thought of quitting it more desirable.
A child of God cannot but greatly desire a more enlarged and experimental acquaintance with His holy Word, and this attainment is greatly promoted by our trials. By far the greater part of the promises in Scripture are made and suited to a state of affliction and, though we may believe they are true, we cannot so well know their sweetness, power and suitability, unless we ourselves are in a state to which they refer. The Lord says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver”. Now, till the day of trouble comes, such a promise is like a city of refuge to an Israelite who was in no danger of the avenger of blood, as he had not slain a man. He had a privilege near him, whose use and value he did not know, because he was not in the case for which it was provided.
But some can say, I not only believe this promise on the authority of the speaker, but I can set my seal to it; I have been in trouble, I took this course for relief, and I was not disappointed. The Lord verily heard and delivered me. Thus afflictions likewise give occasion for our knowing and noticing more of the Lord’s wisdom, power and goodness, in supporting and relieving, than we should otherwise have known.
I have not time to take another sheet; I must therefore contract my homily. Afflictions evidence to ourselves, and manifest to others, the reality of grace. And when we suffer as Christians, exercise some measure of that patience and submission, and receive some measure of these supports and supplies, which the gospel promises to believers, we are more confirmed in the hope that we have not taken up with mere notions; and others may be convinced that we do not follow cunningly devised fables. They likewise strengthen our graces by exercise: as our limbs and natural powers would be feeble if not called to daily exertion; so the graces of the Spirit would languish, unless something was provided to make us use them. And, to say no more, they are honourable, as they advance our conformity to Jesus our Lord, who was a Man of sorrows for our sake.
I think, if we might go to heaven without suffering, we should be unwilling to desire it. Why should we ever wish to go by any other path than that which He has consecrated and endeared by His own example, especially as His people’s sufferings are not penal? There is no wrath in them; the cup He puts in their hands is very different from that which He drank for their sakes. It is only medicinal, to promote their chief good. Here I must stop; but the subject is fruitful and might be pursued through a quire of paper.
1A letter written in December 1776 and taken, with editing, from Newton’s Works, vol. 2.