It has sometimes appeared, even to God's children, as if affliction were not a blessing: it so rouses the evil nature, and calls forth all the opposition of the heart against God's will, that it has brought the loss of the peace and the piety that once appeared to reign. Even in such cases it is working out God's purpose. 'That He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,' is still His object in leading into the wilderness. To an extent we are not aware of, our religion is often selfish and superficial: when we accept the teaching of chastisement in discovering the self-will and love of the world which still prevails, we have learnt one of its first and most needful lessons.
This lesson has special difficulty when the trial does not come direct from God, but through men or circumstances. In looking at second causes, and in seeking for their removal, in the feeling of indignation or of grief, we often entirely forget to see God's will in everything His Providence allows. As long as we do so, the chastisement is fruitless; and perhaps only hardens the more. If, in our study of the pathway of Holiness, there has been awakened in us the desire to accept and adore, and stand complete in, _all the will_ of God, let us in the very first place seek to recognise that will in everything that comes on us. The sin of him who vexes us is not God's will. But it is God's will that we should be in that position of difficulty to be tried and tested. Let our first thought be: this position of difficulty is my Father's will for me: I accept that will as my place now where He sees it fit to try me. Such acceptance of the trial is the way to turn it into blessing. It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the will of God all the day.
_Chastisement leads to the fellowship of God's Son._ The will of God out of Christ is a law we cannot fulfil. The will of God in Christ is a life that fills us. He came in the name of our fallen humanity, and accepted all God's will as it rested on us, both in the demands of the law, and in the consequences which sin had brought upon man. He gave Himself entirely to God's will, whatever it cost Him. And so He paved for us a way through suffering, not only through it in the sense of past it and out of it, but by means and in virtue of it, into the love and glory of the Father. And it is in the power which Christ gives in fellowship with Himself that we too can love the way of the Cross, as the best and most blessed way to the Crown. Scripture says that the will of God is our sanctification, and also that Christ is our Sanctification. It is only in Christ that we have the power to love and rejoice in the will of God. In Him we have the power. He became our Sanctification once for all by delighting to do that will; He becomes our Sanctification in personal experience, by teaching us to delight to do it. He learned to do it; He could not become perfect in doing it otherwise than by suffering. In suffering He draws nigh; He makes our suffering the fellowship of His suffering; and in it makes Himself, who was perfected through suffering, our Sanctification.
O ye suffering ones! all ye whom the Father is chastening! come and see Jesus suffering, giving up His will, being made perfect, sanctifying Himself. _His suffering is the secret of His Holiness, of His Glory, of His Life._ Will you not thank God for anything that can admit you into the nearer fellowship of your blessed Lord? Shall we not accept every trial, great or small, as the call of His love to be one with Himself in living only for God's will. This is Holiness, to be one with Jesus as He does the will of God, to abide in Jesus who was made perfect through suffering.
_Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God's love._ Many a father has been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after being punished in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes their faith in God's Love, it is just through suffering that His children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so distinctly a father's prerogative; it leads so directly to the confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all Love, and that Holiness is the fire of Love, consuming that it may purify, destroying the dross only that it may assimilate into its own perfect purity all that yields itself to the wondrous change.