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This, then, is the first, most comprehensive, yet most special way, in which God is the consolation of the afflicted, that He has revealed, that sorrow is a token of His love. We have often thought perhaps, "If God did but tell me that He loves me!" If He has sent you sorrow or pain, He has told you that He loves you. Suffering is in the order of our salvation; it is in order to our salvation. In the mercy of our God, it arrests the sinner; it deepens the loving sorrow of the penitent; it proves and advances the all-but-perfected. It exhibits us to ourselves; it enhances the love of our Redeemer; it is God's instrument to make us of one mind with Himself. This, then, is the great comprehensive comfort in every ache of mind or body, that we know infallibly from God's infallible Word that it is a token of His love. Be it disease or loss of bodily health or strength, or of clearness of intellect, the consequence of sin; be it the shame with which God " filleth the face that they may seek Thy Face, O God"; be it the first terror of hell, which, by God's grace, scares the yet unconverted sinner towards the wide-open arms of Jesus on the Cross, or the last sharp pang of death, which lets the imprisoned soul go free, to meet its God for whom it yearned and fainted, we know, by God's own Word, it is His love. Yet it is not only love, working through some fixed or some general rule of His Providence. It is something far nearer, more tender, more blessed. It is God's own personal act. It is our Redeemer's own medicinal hand. "I have afflicted thee." "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." "Happy is the man whom God correcteth." "Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of Thy law." This is the deep reassuring truth, that it is not man's caprice, nor a fixed iron law, nor a combination of events, but our own God. This is the deep inward peace in every trial, that He orders each particular blow or weight of sorrow, or fretting care, or harassing discomfort or unrest, in His all-wise love, fitting each trial to our own particular temperament. He gives to each of us just our own trial, what, by His grace, will most amend us, what will bring us most to Himself, what will most draw out the good which He has implanted in us, or burn out the evil which would most estrange or ruin us. This too is not all. It is not an all-wise God, unseen, unfelt, at a distance, guiding all things in perfect wisdom for the good of each individual creature which He had made. Great were this, yea, in one sense, all; for it is His individual, infinite, personal love. He who loves us infinitely loves us individually. But this too not afar off, not only in the heaven of heavens (Psalm 91:15). Trouble is the special presence of God to the soul (Isaiah 43:2). He who, present with them, soothed to the three youths the flames of fire, so that they fanned softly around them, and were to them an unharming robe of glory; He who, ever-present with His disciples, then appeared to them, when the storm was at its highest, and its waves were boisterous; He, still present to the soul, now soothes to His own the fire of affliction, that, while it burns out the dross, it should not touch the soul, but should yield it pure, transfigured and translucent with the fire of love. He who baptizes with a baptism of blood, holds His own, that, although immersed and sunk deep down, the waters should not come in to the very soul itself, but should only wash away its stains through His most precious blood. Can there be more yet than the presence of God with the soul? Yes, the end of the presence is more to the soul itself than that presence itself. For it is the earnest of His abiding presence, yea, of union with God. Suffering, the due reward of our deeds, becomes, by His mercy, the means of conforming us to the Son of His love. While we suffer for our own sins, and bear about us less than their deserved chastisements, God gives us yet an outward likeness to His Cross, in that it is suffering. For " on Him were laid the iniquities of us all." But we still hang, as it were, by His side; His healing compassionate look falls upon us; from His all-holy sufferings there goeth forth virtue to sanctify ours. Hence is deserved suffering by God's mercy such a token of predestination, that it brings us near to, makes us partakers of, the sufferings of Christ.

(E. B. Pusey, D. D.)

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KJV: And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:

WEB: and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children, "My son, don't take lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;