The Pulpit Commentary — Romans — Section 145

came b~m, and he oried aloud, "0 my eon Absalom, my eon, my eon Absalom I would Goo I had died for thee, 0 Ab."lllom, my son, my son I " And so, when the Bible want~ t-0 piotun, grief of the intensest kind, It speak& of mourning ae one mourneth for his only son, 11nd being in bittemesa as one that ls In bitterness for hie fin:tbom (Zech. xii. 10). Parents who mmt t.o avoid the ~l'Cl\test of all grief, mourn- ing over a child of whom they have no hope for eternity, should lose no opportunity of leading their children to the &viour. 2. There is the bitterness qf bodily suffering. Sleepless night.s and weary days of tossing on a bed of sickness-how they tend to take the sunshine out of life ! And then there a.re those trifling ailments, bodily infirmities, for which, perhaps, you get little sympathy, but which keep your body constantly feeble and your mind constantly depressed. It needs a Divine power to bear a life or constant pain. No hum,m strength could stand it unaided without giving way to irritation or despondency. Even the Saviour of the world tasted how bitter is the cup of bodily suffering. 8. There i.s the bitterness of disappointment. Some cherished possession is taken away from you, some valuable property is lost, your earthly means of support t.a.ke to themselves win~ and flee away, some object on which you had set your heart is snatched away out of your reach, or some friend whom you had implicitly trust.ed suddenly proves treacherous and unfaithful. The feeling of disappointment which such circumstances produce was in Esau's mind when he came in to receive hie father's blessing, and found that Jacob hie brother had heg,rtlessly supplanted him. " When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry." Life's disappointments-how much we all know about this kind of bitterness I Yes; tribulation" indeed a 1nffer tree. II. lTs BLBSSBD FBurr. Panl knew what he was talking about when he came to the subject of tribulation. He knew what persecution was. He knew what bodily suffer- ing was. Five times he received thirty-nine stripes. Three times he was beaten with rods. Once he was st.oned. Three times he suffered shipwreck. He had been "in weari- ness and painfulness, in watchinge often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and naked- ness." He knew what danger was. He had been "in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false br~thren." He knew what disappointment was. Like his Master, he too was forsaken in his hour of need by those who made profession of being his friends. He tells us that at his first appearance before Caesar no man stood with him. But whatever his trials had been when he wrote this, or whatever trials may yet be in store for him, he looks upon them all with a calm and peaceful, nay, with an exultant mind. "We glory in tribula- tions also." He knew what blessed fruit c_ould be plucked off that bitter tree. 1. First of all, there was patience. " Tribulation worketh patience." Patience means really the capacity for enduring. If we speak of a patient man, we may mean one who can endure delay, and we say that he can wait patiently; or we may mean one who can endure suffering. and we speak of him as suffering patiently. The connection, then, between suffering and patience it is easy to see. It is by suffering that one learns how to suffer, that is, to be patient. And if we go into practical experience, we are pretty certain to find that the most patient Christian is the one who has suffered most. He was not always thus. Perhaps at first he was like the rough unpolished blo_ck of marble _which I have seen in the Connemara marble works at Galway. He was disposed to resist the ha11,d that was dealing with him in chastening. But the suffering came. It was repeated over and over again, like the incessant process of rubbing to whic~ that. rough- looking block is subjected. But by-and~by he came out of th~ sutt:e~mg with the edges rubood off his temper and the rebelliousness taken out of his spmt, even as the ma.rble comes Bmooth and shining from the hard process through which it has to pass. Such is the UJie of suffering, to purify, to brighten the character, and produce patience in the soul. Indeed, the word" tribulation" conveys this same idea. It is derived from the Latin word tril,ul,um, the threshin~•instrument whereby the Roman husband- man separated the corn from the husks. That proces11 was described as_ tribulatfo, So it is in the spiritual world. Suffering and 60JTow cleanse away the chaft-tho pr1do, the 11elfiahne11s the dis,,L~dience-which is. to be found more or less in all our natures. Let us think r::iore of the result of the suffering than of the suffering itself, moro of the patience it will develop than of the chaff which it will take away, and then we too err. v. 1-21.] THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE RO'MAJJB. 141