Evening Thoughts — February 26

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn your statutes. Psalm 119:71

THE believer, regarding all God's dispensations in the light of needed discipline, cheerfully acquiesces in the wisdom and righteousness of the Divine procedure. Discipline by trial is an essential element in the Christian's sanctification and instruction. Our adorable Lord, as man, exemplified this truth in His own personal history. We read that, "Though he were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." The lesson which Christ learned—to Him a new one—was the lesson of obedience—obedience to the will of His Father in suffering. As the curse dilated before Him into more perfect and awful proportion, He came to learn more of the evil of sin and more of the difficulties of redemption, and so more deeply the lesson of obedience—doing and suffering the will of God. It was thus our blessed Lord was perfected through suffering. And this, beloved, is the school in which the "many sons" Christ is bringing to glory learn submission to the Father's will. The discipline which was becoming in the case of the Head, cannot be without its need and its blessing in the case of the members. There is much—many deep truths of God, and many holy lessons of practical Christianity—to be learned in the pathway trodden by the Savior, which can be learned in no other path—the path of afflictive discipline! But, oh, how needful and how wholesome this discipline! Who would be exempt from it, that has once plucked and tasted the fruit which clusters so richly on the blossoming rod? If submission to the Divine will is ever learned, beyond all question it is where Christ learned it—by the things which we suffer. And, oh, what holy fruit is this—the will of God accomplished in us! The pathway may be through the furnace, whitened seven-fold with the heat, but your will has become more pliant with the will of your Heavenly Father. If the Christian character has become purified, and the graces of the Holy Spirit have become strengthened, and a wider and freer scope has been given to faith, and hope, and love, then ought we not to rejoice in tribulation? The canker-worm has perhaps been busy at the root of your pleasant gourd, the cold east wind has blown rudely over the long-nurtured buds, and the fell hand of death has laid the cedar low, and in the anguish of your soul you exclaim, "Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, with which the Lord has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." But the Son of God drank a deeper and bitterer cup, and trod a more suffering path, than you, and yet could say, "My Father, not my will, but Your be done;" and shall you shrink from a training and a discipline through whose courses God led the Elder Brother and High Priest of our profession? "Oh, no!" you reply "the self-knowledge I have already attained unto has been so needful and so salutary, that I would not that the cup of sorrow had passed my lips untouched. I little thought I was so unbelieving until the Lord tried my faith. I little imagined that I was so impatient, self-willed, and restive, until God bade me wear the yoke and wait His will. I little supposed that my strength was so small, until the Lord laid upon me the burden. Little did I believe how limited was my knowledge of Christ, how deficient was my acquaintance with divine truth, and how estranged my heart was from true prayer, until the affliction of my God set me upon examining my resources to meet it. Then I discovered how shallow was my experience, and how low and meager was my Christianity. Thus when we trace the discipline to its necessity, the chastisement to the evil it was designed to correct, the meek and lowly heart can say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted."