^ There is more to be said about the nature of trial than that it is a test. The strain is not put merely to see who will stand and who will fail. We see this further use in it, that it is not merely to try good but to increase good. Strength comes through the strain. " The bruising flails of God's corrections " are meant to thresh out the useless chaff, and give value to the wheat. Tribulation is not merely trial, but discipline, and occasion for growth, to deepen faith and enrich life. The first fresh rapture has to be transmuted into the crowning quality of endurance. Discipline is not exhausted either by the thought of punishment or by the thought of testing, but is itself a means of giving power. There comes the new strength of a surrendered life, gaining in power and in beauty.^
^ I remember, when apprenticed to a draper as a very young lad, I complained that I was obliged to do all the drudgery — that I had to pull down the shutters, and dust the shop, and clean the windows — while the other young men looked on. My mother, wiser than I, consoled me : " They have all gone through the drudgery before you, and if you will only keep on, you'll reach their position." ^
^ Men continually quarrel with this world for being what God designed it to be — a workshop, a timber-yard, a stone-quarry, a forge. When you go to a manufactory, you go prepared for noise and heat; you arm yom-self to bear fatigue, and you seek to deaden the sensitiveness of your auditory nerves. Noise and dust you know to be inseparable from such places, and you make your arrangements accordingly for meeting them there. And shall I enter the solemn workshop of Life, and marvel that it is no summer arbour of delight, no shady bower of rest ? Shall I complain that its dust turns me sick, and beg that its hammers would cease ringing, to rest my poor aching head ? Verily no. The living stones of human hearts must be squared at any cost : the axe of 1 Hugh Black, Comfm-t, 63. 2 E. H. Evans.
390 HEWING AND BUILDING
affliction must fall, and the hammer of chastening ring, whether I am able to endure their piercing tones or not. The temple must be set up in Jerusalem, and, in order to it, here on Lebanon -must be heard the groans of repentance, the wailings of bereavement, ay, and even the piercing death-cry itself.^
^ We do best when we take it in faith, bearing as firmly as we may the bereavements, disappointments, the bodily afflictions, the mental strain, the spiritual oppression, doubt, loneliness, which God sees fit to use as the instruments of our discipline. We do best when we endure these patiently and in trustful simplicity, believing in the good which they are to accomplish. For
. . . Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears.
And batter'd with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
(3) Lastly, there is the process of conveying to the destined place. The materials for this temple were collected from all parts. The workmen of the king of Tyre were cutting the cedar and fir in Lebanon, and squaring, boring, chiselling, and mortising all manner of beams. Thousands of men were quarrying stone, others were rafting the whole along the sea to Joppa, others teaming it up to Jerusalem. The huntsmen were gathering skins in the east, the miners searching for gold in Ophir, and the Jewish maidens preparing the hangings of silk in Jerusalem ; each work- ing at his or her own special work, but all for the Temple. When they were ready, they were to be brought from all parts to the builders on Mount Moriah. So to-day men and women are being got ready for God's home above. Then, from all quarters of the globe, death bears them above. There is no making complete the family gathering, no finishing the heavenly temple, without the aid of death.
^ A man who occupied a prominent ecclesiastical position in the north of England, the late Dean of York, was lying on his death-bed. One day he said to me that the kindness of so many friends almost broke his heart. "Well," I said, "it would be strange if, considering what you have done for others, our hearts
* G. Dawson.
I KINGS VI. 7 391
were not concerned for you." For a moment he seemed pleased, but almost instantly he said sternly, "Never speak like that again ! " " Why ? " I asked with surprise. " When you come to lie where I am, you will know that there is nothing you have done worth looking at. The only comfort for a dying man is the infinite mercies of his Saviour. I thank God it is perfect peace." ^
II. __
The House of God is Built Silently.
We have already seen that in the New Testament sometimes the individual Christian and sometimes the Church is spoken of as the Temple of God. We shall accordingly speak first of the silent building up of character in the individual, and next of the silent progress of the Kingdom of God.