The Night of Weeping

By Horatius Bonar



Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1—The Family

Chapter 2—The Family Life

Chapter 3—The Family Badge

Chapter 4—The Family Discipline

Chapter 5—The Family Rods

Chapter 6—The Types

Chapter 7—The Proving

Chapter 8—The Rebuking

Chapter 9—The Purifying

Chapter 10—The Arousing

Chapter 11—The Solemnizing

Chapter 12—The Warnings

Chapter 13—The Recollections

Chapter 14—The Consolations

Chapter 15—The Eternal Results









Preface

It is no easy matter to write a book for the family of God. Yet it is 

for them that these thoughts on chastisement are written.

They may be found not unsuitable for the younger brethren of the 

Man of sorrows. For the way is rough, and the desert blast is keen. 

Who of them can say aught regarding their prospects here, save 

that tribulation awaiteth them in every place as they pass along? 

This they must know and prepare for, grasping more firmly at 

every step the gracious hand that is leading them on to the 

kingdom, and looking up for guidance to the loving eye that rests 

over them with fondest vigilance, ever bright and ever tender, 

whether in shadow or in sunshine, whether amid the crowds of 

busy life, or in the solitude of the lonely way.

It is, then, to the members of this family that this little volume is 

offered. They may find in it something which may not merely 

interest them, but may also meet their case; something, too, in 

which, perhaps, they may recognize, not the voice of a stranger, 

but of a brother: “a companion in tribulation and in the kingdom 

and patience of Jesus Christ”(Rev 1:9). For the tones of the 

suffering brotherhood on earth have something in them too 

peculiar not to be instinctively recognized. It is said of Arabian airs 

that they are all plaintive. They all touch some melancholy chord, 

as if the wail of the desert echo were the keynote of each melody. 

It is in some measure thus with the children of the kingdom, while 

sojourning in this wilderness of earth. “Their voice is ever soft, 

gentle, and low.” Sorrow has smoothed away its harshness, and 

breathed gentler feeling into its tones. True, it is the voice of 

gladness, for it is the voice of the forgiven; but still it is sorrowing 

gladness, calm and serious joy. Their peculiar lot as followers of a 

hated Lord and their peculiar circumstances, as standing in the 

midst of a doomed and dying world, have wrought into their spirit 

a deep though serene solemnity of expression, alike in look and 

voice. Hence, there is the instinctive recognition among the 

brotherhood, not only of the family look, but of the family tones.

It is of family matters that we speak, and in these each member has 

a common interest. The “household of faith” has many concerns, 

and not the least of these are its sorrows. These are the lot of all; 

and there is no member of the household but has his share in these, 

either in personal suffering or in helping to bear the burden of 

others.

What is now written may be found suitable to all, whether actually 

under chastisement or not. It is, however, presented specially to 

those who are “in heaviness through manifold temptations,” 

suffering the rebuke of the Lord, passing through fire and through 

water, with “affliction laid upon their loins”(Psa 66:11,12). The 

bruised reed must not be broken, the smoking flax must not be 

quenched. The hands which hang down must be lifted up, and the 

feeble knees confirmed; that which is lame must not be turned out 

of the way, but rather healed.*

Our desire is to minister to the saints in the consolation and 

admonition of the Lord. We would seek to bear their burdens, to 

bind up their wounds, and to dry up at least some out of their many 

tears. To comfort those who mourn is not only to act in obedience 

to the command, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the 

law of Christ”; it is to walk by the side of Jesus in His visits of 

mercy to His suffering saints on earth; nay, it is to be 

fellow-workers with the Holy Ghost as the Church’s Comforter in 

all her tribulations and distresses.

Of these things the world knows little. Its sympathies are not with 

the saints, either in their sorrow or their joy. Family concerns, and 

especially family griefs, are not for strangers to meddle with. They 

are things too high for them. And how shall they understand them 

so long as they remain without? They must first come in and take 

their place among the children beneath the paternal roof. And what 

should stay them? The gate stands open day and night. They would 

be welcomed in with the kindliest greetings of love.

But though standing afar off from the saints and unable to mingle 

its sympathies with theirs, the world still has sorrows of its own, 

deep and many. To grieve, and yet have no comforter; to be 

wounded, and yet have no healer; to be weary, and yet know no 

resting-place—this is the world’s hard lot.

Yet it is a self-chosen one. God did not choose it for them. They 

chose it for themselves. God invites, nay, pleads earnestly with 

them to quit it, yet they will not. Wretched as it is, they prefer it to 

the friendship of Him with whom their heart is at enmity, and 

whose presence is to them all gloom and terror. Yet He continues 

to entreat them. He does not let them alone. The “many sorrows” 

which compass them about are His many messages of grace, His 

unwearied knockings at their fast closed door. He writes “vanity” 

upon the creature, “weariness and vexation” upon earth’s best 

delights that men may not place their confidence in these. Most 

mercifully does He hedge them about with disappointment of 

every form that they may lift their eyes above this earth and 

beyond these heavens to the enduring blessedness that is at His 

right hand forever. With what kindness, though with seeming 

severity, does He mar their best friendships that He may attract 

them to the communion of His own far better and everlasting 

companionship? With what compassion does He break in upon 

their misguided attachments that He may draw them away from 

earth and bind them to Himself by the more blessed ties of His 

own far sweeter love? With what tenderness does He tear asunder 

the bonds of brotherhood and kindred that He may unite them to 

Himself in far dearer and eternal relationship?

With what mercy does He overthrow their prospects of worldly 

wealth and bring down their hopes of earthly power and greatness 

that He may give them the heavenly treasure and make them a 

“royal priesthood” to Himself in the glorious kingdom of His Son. 

With what love does He ruin their reputation among men, breaking 

in pieces their good name which was their idol that He may show 

them the vanity of human praise, leading them to desire the honor 

that cometh from God and to know that in His favor is life and that 

the light of His countenance is the very sunshine of Heaven.

Oh, that a weary, brokenhearted world would learn these lessons of 

grace! Oh, that they would taste and see that God is good! Let 

them but come home to Him. He will not mock them with 

shadows, nor feed them with husks. He will satisfy their craving 

souls; He will turn their midnight into noon; He will give them 

beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise 

for the spirit of heaviness that they may be called trees of 

righteousness, the planting of the Lord.

Let the world, however, regard God’s dealings with them as they 

may: let not “the children” despise the chastening of the Lord, nor 

faint when they are rebuked of Him. They at least should know the 

meaning of His actions toward them, for they know HIM. The 

world may misunderstand His rebukes or put an unkind 

construction upon them; they cannot, for they know that “God is 

love.”

The thoughts that follow are designed to assist them in interpreting 

God’s ways, not merely in finding comfort under trial, but in 

drawing profit from it. I have at least attempted to contribute 

something toward this end. I have done what I could, rather than 

what I would. But it may be that the Head of the family will own 

it, and send it with His own blessing to the scattered members near 

and far. He knows that they need some such words in season; and 

that, if thickening signs deceive not, they will ere long need them 

more. In such a case even this little volume may be helpful.

It is written in much weakness, and with many sins to mar it; amid 

what trials it is of little moment for a stranger to learn. It is written 

by one who is seeking himself to profit by trial, and trembles lest it 

should pass by as the wind over the rock, leaving it as hard as ever; 

by one who would fain in every sorrow draw near to God that he 

may know Him better, and who is not unwilling to confess that as 

yet he knows but little.







Chapter 1

The Family

It was God’s purpose from the beginning, not merely to redeem for 

Himself a people out of a world of sinners, but to bring that people 

into a peculiar relationship to Himself. It was His purpose to draw 

them nearer to Himself than any other order of His creatures, and 

to establish a link of the closest and most peculiar kind between 

them and the Godhead.

To carry out this purpose was the Word made flesh. “He took not 

on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of 

Abraham” (Heb 2:16). “Forasmuch then as the children are 

partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of 

the same” (Heb 2:14).

Thus a new relationship was established, such as till then could 

never have been conceived of as even possible. The tie of creation, 

though not dissolved, was now to be lost in the closer, dearer tie of 

kindred. “Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are 

all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them 

brethren” (Heb 2:11). He calls them brethren, and they call Him 

brother. Being “made of a woman,” He has become partaker of our 

lowly humanity, so as to be bone of our bone, and flesh of our 

flesh; and we being “born of God” are made partakers of the divine 

nature, becoming “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his 

bones.” Thus the saints are the nearest kinsman of the Son of God; 

and if of the Son, then of the Father also, as He hath said, “I and 

my Father are one,” “believest thou not that I am in the Father, and 

the Father in me?”

It is thus that the family relationship is formed and God’s original 

design carried out. For thus it is written, “As many as received 

him, to them gave he power [or the right] to become the sons of 

God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not 

of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of 

God” (John 1:12,13). And again, “Behold what manner of love the 

Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of 

God” (I John 3:1). We are elevated to creation’s highest level. We 

are brought into the inner circle of the Father’s love—nearer his 

throne, nearer his heart than angels, for we are the Body of Christ, 

and members in particular—“the fullness of him that filleth all in 

all.”

Out of this new link there springs the family bond between us and 

the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “his Father and our 

Father, his God and our God.” And it is especially in this name of 

family that God delights. He has many names for His redeemed. 

They are His chosen ones, His people, His flock, His heritage. But 

it is as His family that He speaks of them oftenest, and it is, as 

such, that He bends over them so fondly, as over His first-born—

the children of His heart and the desire of His eyes.

But it is needful that we inquire further concerning this family and 

learn from God’s own account of them who and what they are. By 

nature they are children of wrath, even as others. And thus far there 

is no original difference between them and the world. But they are 

the eternally chosen of the Father, “chosen in him [Christ] before 

the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). This is their true ancestry, 

and this is their chiefest glory. They are “predestinated . . . unto the 

adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the 

good pleasure of his will” (Eph 1:5). They are quickened together 

with Christ, from being dead in trespasses and sins, and raised up 

by the exceeding greatness of God’s power, the same mighty 

power by which He wrought in Christ when He raised him from 

the dead (Eph 1:19,20). They are saved by grace through faith, and 

that not of themselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). They are 

reconciled to God by the death of His Son (Rom 5:10). They are 

delivered from a present evil world according to the will of God 

their Father (Gal 1:4). They are washed in the blood of Jesus and 

justified by faith in His name. They are redeemed from their vain 

conversation, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but 

with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and 

without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of 

the world, but was manifest in these last times for them (I Peter 

1:18-20). They are made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus 

Christ, kings and priests unto God, who are to reign with Christ 

forever over a redeemed and restored creation.

Such is the family. Surely they are high born. Their ancestry is 

from eternity. Their descent is from the King of kings. They are of 

the blood royal of Heaven. And though their present condition be a 

lowly one, their prospects are the brightest that hope ever painted, 

brighter than what eye hath seen or ear hath heard. It doth not yet 

appear what they shall be; but they know that when He shall 

appear, they shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is (I 

John 3:2).

But apart from these descriptions which encircle the saved family 

with such peculiar glory even here, their simple condition of being 

God’s family calls for a little further notice. For it is not outward 

circumstances that form, or give interest to, a home or a family, it 

is the living pulse of affection that is beating there. Neither earthly 

pomp nor earthly poverty can materially alter the real inward 

character of that little circle of human hearts which man calls a 

family. Bright skies and sunshine cannot weaken or sever the 

bond; neither can they allure them away from rejoicing in each 

other’s joy and love. Dark days and tempests cannot sunder them; 

they do but make them gather more closely together then, as being 

all in all to each other. So it is with the family of the redeemed. It 

is not their outward circumstances or prospects that give them the 

name; it is something far tenderer and deeper than these. It is the 

pulse of heavenly affection, throbbing through every member and 

coming down from the infinite heart above; it is this that makes 

them what they are. It is under this aspect that God delights to look 

upon them. It is for this reason especially that He has given to them 

the name they bear.

The word “family” is a sacred one, even among the children of the 

world. There is a hallowed tenderness about it, which few, save the 

wickedest, do not feel in some measure. One of their own poets has 

thus expressed the feeling:

Beneath the foulest mother’s curse

No living thing can thrive;

A mother is a mother still,

The holiest thing alive.

I am by no means in accord with the sentiment contained in these 

words; the language is too strong. Still it shows the world’s feeling 

as to the strength and sacredness of the family bond. And there is 

much of truth contained, or at least implied, in it. No other earthly 

circle can be compared with that of the family. It comprises all that 

a human heart most values and delights in. It is the center where all 

human affections meet and entwine, the vessel into which they all 

pour themselves with such joyous freedom. There is no one word 

which contains in it so many endearing associations and precious 

remembrances, hidden in the heart like gold. It appeals at once to 

the very center of man’s being—his “heart of hearts.” All that is 

sweet, soothing, tender, and true is wrapt up in that one word. It 

speaks not of one circle or of one bond, but of many circles and 

many bonds—all of them near the heart. The family home, the 

family hearth, the family table, family habits, family voices, family 

tokens, family salutations, family melodies, family joys and 

sorrows—what a mine of recollections lies under that one word! 

Take these away, and earth becomes a mere churchyard of 

crumbling bones; and man becomes as so many grains of loosened 

sand, or at best, but as the fragments of a torn flower, which the 

winds are scattering abroad.

All that is beautiful in human relationship, or tender in human 

affection, or gentle in human intercourse; all that is lovable and 

precious in the movements of a human heart from its lowest depth 

to its uppermost surface—all these are wrapt up in the one word: 

family. For close-knit bonds, for steadfast faithfulness in love, for 

depth of sympathy, for endurance in trial and danger—where shall 

we find anything that can be compared with the story of earth’s 

family circles? Conjugal love, parental love, filial love, brotherly 

love, sisterly love—all are here. The many streams of human 

affection empty themselves into it, or flow out of it, for the fertility 

and gladness of the earth.

We need not wonder, then, that this name should be chosen as one 

of the Church’s peculiar names. God delights in it as the name by 

which His company of chosen ones is to be specially called. The 

Family of God—that is the Church’s name. As such He dwells in 

the midst of it, cares for it, and watches over it. His dealings with it 

are those of a father—fond yet strict—loving yet wise—sitting 

among His children, having His eye on each, and ordering in His 

gracious wisdom all the concerns of His household.

His heart is there! Yes, it is in His Church that God’s heart may be 

said specially to be. There it unfolds itself in a way such as it can 

do amid no other order of His creatures. There it shows itself in all 

its manifold fullness such as it has no scope for elsewhere. It is in 

the family alone that the one thing we call affection or love is 

divided and spread out, like a sunbeam into the rainbow’s 

sevenfold hues, there to display itself in all the rich tints of hidden 

beauty. So it is in the Church alone that the love of God is fully 

seen, not merely in all its intensity, but in all its varied riches. All 

kinds of love are unfolded there. There is room for such a wide 

variety of affection, both between the Head and the members, and 

between the members one with the other, that it seems as if there 

had been given new powers of loving as well as new objects to 

love.

No doubt there are other names for the saints besides this one. But 

none of them expresses what this is intended to do. God calls them 

His flock, which implies tender watchfulness on His part, and 

dependent helplessness on theirs. He calls them a vine, denoting 

their oneness, as well as the unceasing nourishment that is ever 

circulating through them from the parent stem. He calls them a 

temple, signifying their compactness of structure, symmetry of 

design, beauty of form, and above all, fitness for the inhabitation 

and worship of Jehovah. He calls them a body, to set forth, not 

merely their comely proportions, but their marvelous unity and 

conscious vitality of being, as well as the closeness of the binding 

tie, and their various serviceableness to each other. He calls them a 

city, intimating their happy community of privileges and rights and 

well-ordered government; the security, peace, abundance which 

they enjoy, the comforts of neighborhood with all its cheerful 

greetings and mutual offices of love. He calls them a kingdom, as 

expressive of their high and honorable estate, of the royalty, the 

glory, the dominion, of which they have been made the heirs.

But various and expressive as are these well-known names, they 

are still imperfect. They describe as it were only the outer circles, 

each name a circle of its own. But the inner circle—the inner 

region of our spiritual being— they do not touch upon. It is that 

well-known word, that magic name, family, which alone can 

express all that God sees of what is comely and tender, loving and 

lovable in the Church of Christ into which He is pouring His love 

through which He delights to see that love circulate unhindered, 

and out of which he expects that love to flow abroad.

There is one thing that strikes us much concerning this family. It is 

the way in which Christ speaks of the special interest which He 

takes in each member. “Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and 

none of them is lost” (John 17:12). How like the family feeling! 

Each name, each face is known; known so familiarly that the least 

and youngest would at once be missed. The place where each sits, 

the room which each occupies, the time of his going out and 

coming in; his looks, his habits, his tones are so thoroughly known 

that the moment anyone is absent, he is missed. And then no other 

can supply his place. His absence makes a blank which none but he 

can fill. An acquaintance or fellow-townsman may drop away and 

never be missed. His place is easily filled by another. Not so with a 

member of the family. Where there is a break in the circle, there is 

a dismal blank; and when death has carried off a brother, a sister, 

or a parent, who or what can ever fill his room? When one flower 

fades, another springs up, fresher perhaps and more fragrant—and 

we forget the faded one. But the withered family flower can have 

no successor: it dies, and there is a blank forever. Might it not be 

with some such feeling that Jesus looked around upon His vast 

household circle, and, while surveying each well-known face, gave 

thanks that not one was lost; as if He could not have spared so 

much as one of those whom the Father had given Him.

Oh, the deep interest which Jesus takes in each! Truly it is a 

personal and peculiar attachment for each member. Do we not lose 

much by forgetting this? Even in human things we are apt to 

overlook this. We call the feeling which the Father entertains for 

each of His children, love; and well we call it so, but this is not all. 

There is a difference in the love He bears for his eldest and His 

youngest born, a difference in the case of each, called forth by the 

peculiar character of each. It is this minute and special love which 

is so precious. Were it not for this, we should feel as if we had only 

part of our Father’s heart, as if we had not all of that which 

rightfully belongs to us. But, realizing this, we feel as if we had 

His whole heart, and yet our having the whole did not rob our 

brothers and sisters of any. It is with a family as with the sun in the 

firmament. It is the property of all, and yet each has the whole of 

it. Even so with Jehovah, our heavenly Father; even so with Jesus, 

our elder brother. His is a special, personal, peculiar love, just as if 

He loved no other, but had His whole heart to spare for us. His is a 

minute and watchful care, bending over each, day and night, as if 

He had no other to care for. How sweet to think that each of us is 

the special object of such personal attachment, the peculiar object 

of such unwearied vigilance! What manner of love is this! Now we 

believe and are sure that we shall be fully cared for, and not one 

want or sorrow will be overlooked. Now we know that “all things 

shall work together for our good,” and that the end of everything 

which befalls us here shall be light and glory forever! “I know the 

thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace 

and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jer 29:11). “As one 

whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you” (Isa 66:13). 

“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 

fear him” (John 15:9).

It is sweet to realize the common love flowing out of the Father’s 

bosom to the whole happy household of His saved ones; but it is 

no less sweet, specially in the day of trial, to dwell upon the 

personal love He bears so peculiarly to each. It is blessed to 

identify ourselves with such a family who are all joying in the 

sunshine of paternal love; but it is as blessed at times to isolate 

oneself and realize the individual love which is our own peculiar 

heritage. Thus felt the Bride when she said, “Let him kiss me with 

the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine” (Song 

1:12). “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song 26:3).

It was when the Holy Spirit first opened our ears to listen to the 

tale of love which the Gospel brought to us that we sought our 

Father’s house and rested not until we had found ourselves in His 

embrace. It was when we first received “the gift of God,” and 

understood the love which that gift declared, that we took our place 

in the family circle, tasting the plenty of our Father’s table and 

enjoying the sweetness of our Father’s smile. And even as we 

entered in, so are we to abide forever, “rooted and grounded in 

love,” realizing the words of Jesus, “As the Father hath loved me, 

so have I loved you: continue ye in my love” (John 15:9).







Chapter 2

The Family Life

They live by faith. Thus they began and thus they are to end. “We 

walk by faith and not by sight.” Their whole life is a life of faith. 

Their daily actions are all of faith. This forms one of the main 

elements of their character. It marks them out as a peculiar people. 

None live as they do.

Their faith is to them “the substance of things hoped for, the 

evidence of things not seen.” It is a sort of substitute for sight and 

possession. It so brings them into contact with the unseen world 

that they feel as if they were already conversant with, and living 

among, the things unseen. It makes the future, the distant, the 

impalpable, appear as the present, the near, the real. It removes all 

intervening time; it annihilates all interposing space; it transplants 

the soul at once into the world above. That which we know is to be 

hereafter is felt as if already in being. Hence, the coming of the 

Lord is always spoken of as at hand. Nay, more than this, the saints 

are represented as “having their conversation in heaven,” as being 

already “seated with Christ in heavenly places,”(Eph 2:16) as 

having “come to Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, 

the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 

to the general assembly and church of the firstborn. which are 

written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of 

just men made perfect” (Heb 12:22). The things amid which they 

are to move hereafter are so realized by faith as to appear the 

things amid which they are at present moving. They sit in 

“heavenly places” and look down upon the earth, with all its clouds 

and storms, as lying immeasurably far beneath their feet. And what 

is a “present evil world” to those who are already above all its 

vicissitudes and breathing a purer atmosphere?

Such is the power of faith. It throws back into the far distance the 

things of earth, the things that men call near and real; and it brings 

forward into vital contact with the soul the things which men call 

invisible and distant. It discloses to us the heavenly mansions, their 

passing splendor, their glorious purity, their blessed peace. It 

shows us the happy courts, the harmonious company, the adoring 

multitudes. It opens our ears also, so that when beholding these 

great sights we seem to hear the heavenly melody and to catch the 

very words of the new song they sing, “Thou art worthy . . . for 

thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of 

every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made 

us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” 

(Rev 5:9).

It, moreover, points our eye forward to what is yet to come: the 

coming of the Lord, the judgment of the great day, the restitution 

of all things, the kingdom that cannot be moved, the city which 

hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. While thus it 

gives to things invisible a body and a form which before they 

possessed not in our eyes, on the other hand, it divests things 

visible of that semblance of excellence and reality with which they 

were fomerly clothed. It strips the world of its false but 

bewildering glow, and enables us to penetrate the thin disguise that 

hides its poverty and meanness. It not only sweeps away the cloud 

which hung above us, obstructing our view of heavenly excellence, 

but it places that cloud beneath us to counteract the fallacious 

brightness and unreal beauty which the world has thrown over 

itself to mask its inward deformity.

Thus it is that faith enables us to realize our true position of 

pilgrims and strangers upon earth, looking for the city which hath 

foundations, whose builder and maker is God. It is into this that we 

are introduced by faith at our conversion. For what is our 

conversion but a turning of our back upon the world and bidding 

farewell to all that the heart had hitherto been entwined around? It 

is then that like Abraham we forsake all and go out not knowing 

whither. Old ties are broken, although sometimes hard to sever. 

New ones are formed, although not of earth. We begin to look 

around us and find all things new. We feel that we are strangers—

strangers in that very spot where we have been so long at home. 

But this is our joy. We have left our father’s house, but we are 

hastening on to a more enduring home. We have taken leave of the 

world—but we have become heirs of the eternal kingdom, sons 

and daughters of the Lord Almighty. We have left Egypt, but 

Canaan is in view. We are in the wilderness, but we are free. Ours 

is a pathless waste, but we move forward under the shadow of the 

guardian cloud. Sorrowful, we yet rejoice; poor, we make many 

rich; having nothing, yet we possess all things. We have a rich 

inheritance in reversion and a long eternity in which to enjoy it 

without fear of loss, or change, or end.

Walking thus by faith and not by sight, what should mar our joy? 

Does it not come from that which is within the veils? And what 

storm of the desert can find entrance there? Our rejoicing is in the 

Lord, and He is without variableness or shadow of turning. We 

know that this is not our rest; neither do we wish it were so, for it 

is polluted; but our joy is this, that Jehovah is our God, and His 

promised glory is our inheritance forever. Our morning and our 

evening song is this “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance 

and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines have fallen unto 

me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psa 16:5).

Why should we, then, into whose hands the cup of gladness shall 

ere long be put, shrink from the vinegar and the gall? Why should 

we, who have dearer friends above better bonds that cannot be 

dissolved, be disconsolate at the severance of an earthly tie? Our 

homes may be empty, our firesides may be thinned, and our hearts 

may bleed: but these are not enduring things; and why should we 

feel desolate as if all gladness had departed? Why should we, who 

shall wear a crown and inherit all things, sigh or fret because of a 

few years’ poverty and shame? Earth’s dream will soon be done; 

and then comes the day of “songs and everlasting joy”—the long 

reality of bliss! Jesus will soon be here; and “when he who is our 

life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory.”

Shall trial shake us? Nay, in all this we are more than conquerors 

through Him that loved us. Shall sorrow move us? Faith tells us of 

a land where sorrow is unknown. Shall the death of saints move 

us? Faith tells us not to sorrow as those who have no hope, for if 

we believe that Jesus died and rose again, them also that sleep in 

Jesus will God bring with Him. Shall the pains and weariness of 

this frail body move us? Faith tells us of a time at hand when this 

corruptible shall put on incorruption, and death shall be swallowed 

up in victory. Shall privation move us? Faith tells us of a day when 

the poverty of our exile shall be forgotten in the abundance of our 

peaceful, plenteous home, where we shall hunger no more, neither 

thirst any more.

Shall the disquieting bustle of this restless life annoy us? Faith tells 

us of the rest that remaineth for the people of God—the sea of 

glass like unto crystal on which the ransomed saints shall stand—

no tempest, no tumult, no shipwreck there. Shall the lack of this 

world’s honors move us? Faith tells us of the exceeding and eternal 

weight of glory in reserve. Have we no place to lay our head? Faith 

tells us that we have a home, though not in Caesar’s house, a 

dwelling, though not in any city of earth. Are we fearful as we look 

around upon the disorder and wretchedness of this misgoverned 

earth? Faith tells us that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Do 

thoughts of death alarm us? Faith tells us that “to die is gain,” and 

whispers to us, “What, are you afraid of becoming immortal, afraid 

of passing from this state of death, which men call life, to that 

which alone truly deserves the name!”

Such is the family life—a life of faith. We live upon things unseen. 

Our life is hid with Christ in God that when He who is our life 

shall appear, we may appear with Him in glory. This mode of life 

is not that of the world at all but the very opposite. Nevertheless, it 

has been that of the saints from the beginning. This is the way in 

which they have walked, going up through the wilderness leaning 

on their Beloved. And such is to be the walk of the saints till the 

Lord comes. Oh, how much is there in these thoughts concerning 

it, not only to reconcile us to it, but to make us rejoice in it, and to 

say, I reckon that the sufferings of this present life, are not worthy 

to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us! For 

all things are ours, whether life or death, things present or things to 

come, all are ours; for we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. Yea, 

we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. “This is the 

heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of 

me, saith the Lord” (Isa 54:17).

We know not a better type or specimen of the family life than 

Abraham or Israel in their desert wanderings. Look at Abraham. 

He quits all at the command of the God of glory. This begins his 

life of faith. Then he journeys onward not knowing whither. Then 

he sojourns as a stranger in the land which God had given him. 

Then he offers up Isaac. Then he buys for himself a tomb where he 

may lay his dust till the day of resurrection. All is faith. He lives 

and acts as a stranger. He has no home. He has his altar and his 

tent, but that is all—the one he builds wherever he goes, in the 

peaceful consciousness of sin forgiven and acceptance found; the 

other he pitches from day to day in token of his being a pilgrim and 

a stranger upon earth. And what more does any member of the 

family need below, but his altar and his tent—a Saviour for a sinful 

soul, and a shelter for a frail body until journeying days are done?

Or look at Israel. They quit Egypt. There the life of faith begins. 

Then they cross the Red Sea. Then they take up their abode in the 

desert. They have no city to dwell in now. They have no fleshpots 

now—nothing but the daily manna for food. They have no river of 

Egypt now— nothing but a rock to yield them water. All is waste 

around. All is to be of faith, not of sight. They are alone with God, 

and the whole world is afar off. They rear their altar, they pitch 

their tents, as did Abraham, with this only difference: above their 

heads there floats a wondrous cloud, which, like a heavenly 

canopy, stretches itself out over their dwellings when they rest, or 

like an angel-guide, it takes wing before them when God summons 

them to strike their tents that it may lead them in the way. Nay, and 

as if to mark more vividly the pilgrim condition of the family, God 

Himself, when coming down into the midst of them, chooses a tent 

to dwell in. It is called “the tabernacle of the Lord,” or more 

literally “Jehovah’s tent.” Jehovah pitches His tent side by side 

with Israel’s tents, as if He were a stranger too, a wanderer like 

themselves!

This is our life. We are to be strangers with God as all our fathers 

were. It is the life of the desert, not of the city. But what of that? 

All is well. Jehovah is our God, and we shall soon be in His “many 

mansions.” Meanwhile, we have the tent, the altar, and the cloud. 

We need no more below. The rest is secured for us in Heaven, 

“ready to be revealed in the last time.”





Chapter 3

The Family Badge

The family of which we speak is gathered out of every nation and 

kindred, and people, and tongue. It is “a great multitude that no 

man can number.”

Yet it is but one family. There is a family likeness among all its 

many members; and a family name by which they are known. They 

have many things in common; nay, there are few things which are 

not common to all. They are all of earth. It is their native clime. 

They are all sprinkled with the same blood and begotten again by 

the same Spirit. They all sing one song, use one language, rejoice 

in one hope, and are heirs of one inheritance. This oneness of 

feature and feeling and habit, throughout so many ages and amid 

so many diverse nations, marks them out as a peculiar people and 

reveals their relationship to Him who is “the same yesterday, and 

to-day and forever.”

But they have one mark more peculiar than any of these. It is truly 

a family badge: they are all cross-bearers. This is the unfailing 

token by which each member may be recognized. They all bear a 

cross. Nor do they hide it as if ashamed of it. They make it their 

boast. “God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our 

Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to us, and we 

unto the world.” Sometimes it is lighter, and sometimes it is 

heavier; sometimes it has more of shame and suffering, and 

sometimes less, but still it is upon them. They carry it with them 

wherever they go. And it is always a cross: not merely so in name, 

but in reality, a token of reproach and sorrow. Sometimes they are 

represented as carrying it, and sometimes as being nailed to it, but 

it is still the cross.

They took it up when first they believed in Jesus and owned Him 

as their all. Then it was that they forsook the world’s tents and 

went without the gate, bearing the reproach of the crucified One. 

He whom they follow both bore the cross and was nailed to it, and 

why should they shrink from the like endurance? Shall they be 

ashamed of Him? Shall they not rather count it honorable to follow 

where He has led the way, and to bear for Him some faint 

resemblance of what He bore for them? Shall anything in the world 

be esteemed more precious, more honorable than the cross of their 

beloved Lord? The world derides and despises it, but it is the cross 

of Jesus; and that is all to them. A saint of other days, a 

cross-bearer of the olden time, has said, “O blessed cross of Christ, 

there is no wood like thine!”

Besides, this was the Master’s will. He has laid on each the 

command to bear the cross. “If any man will come after me, let 

him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” 

(Luke 9:23). “He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, 

is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:38). The cross, then, is the badge of 

discipleship, and no follower of the Lord can be without it. The 

two things are inseparable. God has joined them, and man cannot 

sunder them. No cross, no saint. No cross, no Son. We must carry 

His cross all our life; we must be baptized with His baptism; we 

must endure His reproach; we must glory in being clothed with His 

shame. The flesh must be crucified with its affections and lusts: 

our members must be mortified; our old man must take the place of 

shame; we in whom the flesh still remaineth, though its dominion 

is broken, must be willing to appear as outcasts and malefactors 

before the world, as Jesus did when He bore our sins upon the hill 

of shame. Jesus, then, with His own hand lays the cross on each 

one who comes to Him, saying, “Take this and follow me. Take it 

and be reproached for Me. Take it and endure tribulation for Me. 

Take it, and count all things but loss for the excellency of the 

knowledge of Jesus Christ thy Lord. Take it and be willing to go 

even to prison or to death for Me, not counting your life dear unto 

you, that you may follow Me to the end and receive the unfading 

crown.” Learn to endure the cross and to despise the shame.

But further, we have the Master’s example as well as the Master’s 

will concerning this. I do not mean merely that He hung upon the 

cross. I do not refer simply to the fact of His crucifixion. I mean 

much more than that. That was but the closing scene of a whole 

life of crucifixion. He was a cross-bearer from the hour that He 

was laid in the manger. All His days He bore the cross. His life 

was but a pilgrimage to Calvary with the cross upon His shoulders. 

Tradition tells us that, as He left the Judgment Hall, He was led 

along the “dolorous way” to Golgotha. But in truth, His whole 

course on earth was the mournful way. It was all reproach and 

sorrow from His cradle to His grave. His was a sorrowing life; His 

death was but the summing up of His many sorrows, the gathering 

of them all together and pressing them into His cup at once, till the 

vessel burst, because it could hold no more. And then, for Him, the 

cross and the shame and the sorrow were at an end forever. But for 

us the cross remaineth still.

Throughout life He was the “man of sorrows.” He was “acquainted 

with grief.” And herein we see something more of the family 

badge as it was displayed in the Elder Brother. Acquaintanceship 

with grief! This is the description given us of it. It is not one visit 

that makes us acquainted with a fellow-man. Companionship is the 

result of continued intercourse. So one sorrow does not make us 

acquainted with grief, however deep and sharp its pangs may be. It 

may be the beginning of our acquaintanceship, but that is all. There 

must be daily, hourly intercourse. Thus it was with Jesus. 

Thirty-three years daily converse with grief made Him acquainted 

with it. And so it is with us. The saints are men of sorrows still; 

and their acquaintanceship with grief must be obtained by daily 

fellowship. The disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant 

above his Lord. We need not think of another process than that 

which He underwent. He was made perfect through sufferings, and 

so must we. The Captain of our salvation is, in this respect, the 

model and pattern of His saved ones. We are always to bear “about 

in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus 

might be made manifest in our body” (II Cor 4:10).

It is the Lamb that we follow: the Lamb “as it had been slain.” This 

surely speaks most plainly of the family badge. We are followers 

of the Man with the pierced hands and feet, the Man who is 

covered all over with the marks of the buffet and the scourge and 

the spitting, the Man with the crown of thorns. Yea, He is our 

Elder Brother. He is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And if 

we see so distinctly the family badge on Him, shall we shrink from 

taking it up and binding it in triumph as a jewel on our forehead—

as a crown upon our head? Surely the purple robe of mockery may 

beseem us better than it suited Him.

There is one mark by which, from the beginning, he has been 

distinguished as the woman’s seed predicted in Eden. It is the 

bruised heel. This is, in truth, only another way of expressing His 

character as the suffering, the crucified Son of Man. This was the 

mark which God gave by which He was to be known. Yet it was 

just at this stumbling stone that Israel stumbled. They had no eyes 

for the dying Saviour. The humbled Jesus found no favor with 

them. The bruised heel they could not away with. The very mark 

which God set upon Him as Messiah was that on account of which 

Israel rejected Him. Yet it is the bruised heel in which we rejoice. 

It is the Man with the bruised heel who has won our hearts. It is He 

whom we follow; and His bruised heel we engrave upon our 

banner as our most honorable badge.

The similar bruising we look for as our portion here. Nor are we 

ashamed of it. All the saints before us have experienced it; are we 

better than they? Shall the soldiers of the last days be ashamed to 

wear the uniform which the army of the saints has gloried in for six 

thousand years?

It is very remarkable that the apostle fixes upon affliction as the 

mark of true Sonship. Truly, he makes it the family badge. Nay, he 

makes it the test of our legitimacy. “What son is he whom the 

father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof 

all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb 12:7,8). 

Strong language this! Had any but an inspired apostle used it, there 

would have been outcry against it as absurd and extravagant. Let 

us, how ever, take it as it is, for we know that it speaks the mind of 

God. Chastisement is, then, really one of the chief marks of our 

lawful and honorable birth. Were this characteristic not to be found 

on us, we should be lacking in one of the proofs of our sonship. 

Our legitimacy might be called in question. It might be said that 

He was not recognizing us as his true-born sons, and that either He 

had never received us as such, or had rejected us. There must be 

the family badge to establish our claim of birth and to be a pledge 

of paternal recognition on the part of God our Father.

It is a solemn thought. Flesh and blood shrink from it. We look 

around to see if there be no way of escaping, and ask if it must be 

so. Yes, it must be, as we shall shortly see, and the attempt to shun 

it is vain. Yet it is also a blessed thought. It cheers us under trial to 

remember that this is the Father’s seal set upon His true-born sons. 

Oh! how it lightens the load to think that it is really the pledge of 

our divine adoption.

We need not then count upon bright days below, nor think to pass 

lightly over the pleasant earth as if our life were but the “shadow 

of a dream.” Joy within we may expect—“joy unspeakable and full 

of glory”—for that is the family portion. But joy from without, the 

joy of earth’s sunshine, the joy of the world’s ease and abundance, 

the joy of unsevered bonds and unweeping eyes is not our lot in 

this vale of tears.

Still, in the midst of the ever-wakeful storms through which we are 

passing to the kingdom, there is peace— deep peace—too deep for 

any storm of earth to reach. In the world we have tribulation, but in 

Jesus we have peace. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 

unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you.” And it is this 

which gives the peculiar aspect to the saints, the aspect of mingled 

joy and grief. The eye is dim with tears, yet, behold! it glistens 

with joy. There is the brow of shaded thought, yet peace is playing 

round it. Clouds overshadow them, but on every cloud we see calm 

sunshine resting.

Their “peace is like a river.” It is not stagnant as the lake, nor 

tumultuous as the sea, but ever in calm motion, ever flowing on in 

its deep channel like a river. The course may sometimes be through 

rocks, sometimes through level plains, sometimes through tangled 

brakes, sometimes along the cornfield or “the hill of vines,” yet 

still it moves unhindered on. It may be night or day, it may be 

winter or summer, it may be storm or calm, but it is there—flowing 

on till the embrace of ocean receives it. Such is our peace! Let us 

hold it fast.

Nor need we hide our peace any more than we should hide our 

cross. Let the world see both and learn how well they agree 

together. For it is the cross that makes this peace feel so sweet and 

suitable. Amid the tears of grief peace keeps her silent place like 

the rainbow upon the spray of the cataract; nor can it be driven 

thence so long as Jehovah’s sunshine rests upon the soul. “The 

work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of 

righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.”







Chapter 4

The Family Discipline

“Train up a child in the way he should go” is the injunction God 

lays on us. But it is, moreover, the principle on which He Himself 

is acting with His Church. He is training up His children here. This 

is the true character of His dealings with them. The education of 

His saints is the object He has in view. It is training for the 

kingdom; it is education for eternity.

How momentous, then, is the training! It is God who is carrying it 

on by the Holy Ghost. It is the Church, which is the Body of 

Christ, that is the subject of it. And it is to prepare her for an 

everlasting kingdom! In bringing many sons unto glory, it was 

needful that even the Captain of their salvation should be made 

perfect through suffering. Surely, then, God lays vast stress upon 

this discipline. In His estimation it is no unimportant nor 

unmeaning exercise. Knowing this, the apostle exhorts us on this 

very point, “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.” 

It is too solemn to be despised, too momentous to be overlooked. 

The education of God’s family is concerned with it. The 

preparation of an heir of glory depends on it.

This discipline begins at our conversion. The moment we are taken 

into the family it commences. “He scourgeth every son whom he 

receiveth.” It is not always visible; neither are we at all times 

conscious of its operation. Nevertheless, from the very day that 

“we are begotten again to a lively hope” it begins.

It ends only with life, or in the case of the last generation of the 

Church, with their being “caught up to meet the Lord in the air.” It 

is a whole lifetime’s process. It is a daily, an hourly discipline 

which admits of no cessation. The rod may not always be applied, 

but still the discipline goes on.

1. It is the discipline of love. Every step of it is kindness. There is 

no wrath or vengeance in any part of the process. The discipline of 

the school may be harsh and stern, but that of the family is love. 

We are sure of this; and the consolation which it affords is 

unutterable. Love will not wrong us. There will be no needless 

suffering. Were this but kept in mind there would be fewer hard 

thoughts of God among men, even when His strokes are most 

severe. I know not a better illustration of what the feelings of a 

saint should be, in the hour of bitterness, than the case of Richard 

Cameron’s father. The aged saint was in prison “for the Word of 

God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” The bleeding head of his 

martyred son was brought to him by his unfeeling persecutors, and 

he was asked derisively if he knew it. “I know it, I know it,” said 

the father, as he kissed the mangled forehead of his fair-haired son, 

“it is my son’s; my own dear son’s! It is the Lord! good is the will 

of the Lord, who cannot wrong me or mine, but who hath made 

goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.”

2. It is the discipline of wisdom. He who administers it is the “God 

only wise.” What deep wisdom then must there be in all His 

dealings! He knows exactly what we need and how to supply it. He 

knows what evils are to be found in us, and how these may be best 

removed. His training is no random work. It is carried on with 

exquisite skill. The time and the way and the instrument are all 

according to the perfect wisdom of God. The fittest time is chosen, 

just the very moment when discipline is called for, and when it 

would be most profitable. The surest, most direct, and at the same 

time gentlest method is devised. The instrument which will be 

surest yet safest, most effectual yet least painful, is brought into 

operation. For all is wisdom in the discipline of God.

3. It is the discipline of faithfulness. “In faithfulness thou hast 

afflicted me,” said David. All is the doing of a faithful God—a 

God who is faithful to us as well as faithful to Himself. “Faithful 

are the wounds of a friend,” says Solomon; and the believer finds 

in trouble the faithfulness of the truest of friends. He is so faithful 

that He will not pass by a single fault that He sees in us, but will 

forthwith make it known that it may be removed. He gave this 

command to Israel, “Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, 

and not suffer sin upon him,” (Lev 19:17) and He Himself acts 

upon the command He gave. He is too faithful a Father to suffer 

sin upon His children unreproved. He is true to us, whether in 

sending the evil or the good; shall we not say, truer and more 

faithful when He inflicts the evil than when He bestows the good? 

It almost at times seems to break the heart of a loving friend to be 

obliged to say or do anything severe toward the friend he loves. 

Yet for love’s sake he will do it. In faithfulness he will not shrink 

from it. And in doing so, is he not true to his friend? So with a 

chastening God. He is faithful when He blesses—more faithful 

when He chastens. This surely is consolation. It may well allay all 

murmuring and establish our hearts in peace.

4. It is the discipline of power. He who is carrying it on is not one 

who can be baffled and forced to give up His design. He is able to 

carry it out in the unlikeliest circumstances and against the most 

resolute resistance. Everything must give way before Him. This 

thought is, I confess, to me one of the most comforting connected 

with the discipline. If it could fail! If God could be frustrated in 

His designs after we have suffered so much, it would be awful! To 

be scourged and suffer pain by one who is not able to make good 

to us the profit of this would add inconceivable bitterness to the 

trial. And then our hearts are so hard, our wills so stubborn, that 

nothing save an Almighty pressure applied to them can work the 

desired change. Oh, when the soul is at strife within itself, battling 

in desperate conflict with its stormy lusts, when the flesh rises up 

in its strength and refuses to yield, when the whole heart appears 

like iron or is adamant, it is most blessed to think upon God’s 

chastisements as the discipline of power! It is this that assures us 

that all shall yet be well. And it is in the strength of this assurance 

that we gird ourselves for the battle, knowing that we must be 

more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

There might be love in the dealing—love to the uttermost—and yet 

all be in vain. For love is oftentimes helpless, unable to do aught 

for the beloved object. There might be wisdom, too, and yet it 

might prove wholly ineffectual. There might also be untiring 

faithfulness, yet no results. It might be altogether impotent even in 

its fondest vigilance. It might be baffled in its most earnest 

attempts to bless. But when it is infinite power that is at work, we 

are sure of every obstacle being surmounted, and everything that is 

blessed coming most surely to pass. My sickbed may be most 

lovingly tended, most skillfully provided for, most faithfully 

watched, and I may be most sweetly soothed by this fond and 

unwearied care; yet, if there be no power to heal, no resistless 

energy such as sweeps all hindrances before it, then I may still lie 

hopeless there; but, if the power to heal be present, the power that 

makes all diseases flee its touch, the power that, if need be, can 

raise the dead, then I know of a truth that all is well.

Oh, it is blessed and comforting to remember that it is the 

discipline of power that is at work upon us! God’s treatment must 

succeed. It cannot miscarry or be frustrated even in its most 

arduous efforts, even in reference to its minutest objects. It is the 

mighty power of God that is at work within us and upon us, and 

this is our consolation. It is the grasp of an infinite hand that is 

upon us, and nothing can resist its pressure. All is love, all is 

wisdom, and all is faithfulness, yet all is also power. The very 

possibility of failure is thus taken away. Were it not for this power 

there could be no certainty of blessing, and were it not for this 

certainty, how poor and partial would our comfort be! He, yes, He 

who chastises us is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that 

we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” (Eph 

3:20).

Hence to a soul, conscious of utter helplessness and weary of the 

struggle within, between the spirit and the flesh, there is “strong 

consolation” in remembering the power of Him whose hand is now 

grasping him so firmly on every side. His sorely tossed spirit finds 

peace in calling to mind “the years of the right hand of the Most 

High”— all the “works of the Lord and his wonders of old.” The 

“strength of Israel” is the name he delights in, as the name of his 

Chastener. He thus bethinks himself, “The God who made these 

heavens and stretched them out in their vastness and majesty, who 

moves these stars in their courses and arrests them at a word, is the 

God who is chastening me. He who raises and stills the mighty 

deep and all the multitude of its waves, the God of the tempest and 

of the earthquake, ‘the framer of light and dark, the wielder of the 

lightning and the builder of the everlasting hills,’ is the God who is 

now laying His rod so heavily upon me.” Thus each new proof or 

aspect of Jehovah’s power becomes a new source of consolation in 

the day of chastisement and sorrow.

Such, then, is the nature of the family discipline when viewed in 

reference to God. Love, wisdom, faithfulness, and power unite to 

devise and carry it out. It must, then, be perfect discipline, the 

completest and most successful that can be thought of or desired. It 

is well to look at it in this light, for it is thus that we become 

entirely satisfied with all that comes to pass and feel that “it is 

well.” But let us consider it in another aspect. We have seen what 

it is when flowing out of God; let us see what it is when operating 

upon man.

As we observed before, God’s object in chastisement is the 

education of His children, the training up of the saints. It is their 

imperfect spiritual condition that makes this so necessary. And 

now we proceed to inquire in what way it works, and toward what 

regions of the soul it is specially directed. For while, doubtless, it 

embraces the whole soul in all its parts and powers, it may be well 

to consider it as more especially set to work upon its mind, its will, 

its heart, and its conscience.

1. It is the training of the mind. We are naturally most unteachable 

as well as most ignorant, neither knowing anything nor willing to 

know. The ease of prosperous days augments the evil. God at 

length interposes and compels us to learn. “The rod and reproof 

give wisdom” (Prov 29:15). He sends trial and that makes us 

willing to learn. Our unteachableness gives way. We become 

aware of our ignorance. We seek teaching from on high. God 

begins his work of instruction. Light pours in on every side. We 

grow amazingly in knowledge. We learn the meaning of words 

now which we had hitherto used but as familiar sounds. Scripture 

shines out before us in new effulgence; it flashes into us; every 

verse seems to contain a sunbeam; dark places become light; every 

promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be 

understood become in a moment plain.

How fast we learn in a day of sorrow! It is as if affliction awoke 

our powers and lent them new quickness of perception. We 

advance more in the knowledge of Scripture in a single day than in 

years before. We learn “songs in the night,” though such music 

was unknown before. A deeper experience has taken us down into 

the depths of Scripture and shown us its hidden wonders. Luther 

used to say, “Were it not for tribulation I should not understand 

Scripture.” And every sorrowing saint responds to this, as having 

felt its truth—felt it as did David, when he said, “Blessed is the 

man whom thou chasteness, . . . and teachest him out of thy 

law”(Psa 94:12). “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I 

might learn thy statures” (Psa 119:71). What teaching, what 

training of the mind goes on upon a sickbed, or under the pressure 

of grief! And, oh, what great and wondrous things will even some 

little trial whisper in the ear of a soul that is “learning of the 

Father”!

In some cases this profit is almost unfelt, at least during the 

continuance of the process. We think that we are learning nothing. 

Sorrow overwhelms us. Disaster stuns us. We become confused, 

nervous, agitated, or perhaps insensible. We seem to derive no 

profit. Yet ere long we begin to feel the blessed results. Maturity of 

judgment, patience in listening to the voice of God, a keener 

appetite for His Word, a quicker discernment of its meaning— 

these are soon realized as the gracious results of chastisement. The 

mind has undergone a most thorough discipline, and has, 

moreover, made wondrous progress in the knowledge of divine 

truth through the teaching of the Holy Ghost.

2. It is the training of the will. The will is the seat of 

rebelliousness. Here the warfare is carried on. “The flesh lusteth 

against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” At conversion 

the will is bent in the right direction, but it is still crooked and 

rigid. Rebelliousness is still there. Prosperous days may sometimes 

conceal it so that we are almost unconscious of its strength. But it 

still exists. Furnace heat is needed for softening and strengthening 

it. No milder remedy will do. “It requires,” says a suffering saint, 

“all the energy of God to bend my will to His.” Yet it must be 

done. The will is the soul’s citadel. Hence, it is the will that God 

seems so specially to aim at in chastisement. Fire after fire does He 

kindle in order to soften it; and blow after blow does He fetch 

down on it to straighten it. Nor does He rest till He has made it 

thoroughly flexible and hammered out of it the many relics of self 

which it contains. He will not stay His hand till He has thoroughly 

marred our self-formed plans and shown us the folly of our 

self-chosen ways.

This is specially the case in long-continued trials; either when 

these come stroke after stroke in sad succession, or when one 

fearful stroke at the outset has left behind it consequences which 

years perhaps will not fully unfold. The bending and straightening 

of the will is often a long process, during which the soul has to 

pass through waters deep and many, through fires hot and ever 

kindling up anew. Protracted trials seem specially aimed at the 

will. Its perversity and stiffness can only be wrought out of it by a 

long succession of trials. It is only by degrees that it becomes truly 

pliable and is brought into harmony with the will of God. We can 

at a stroke lop off the unseemly branch; but to give a proper bent to 

the tree itself, we require time and assiduous appliances for months 

or years. Yet the will must give way. However proud, however 

forward, it must bend. God will not leave it till He has made it one 

with His own. [1]

3. It is the training of the heart. Man’s heart beats false to God. It is 

true to many things but false to Him. When first the Holy Spirit 

touches it, and shows it “the exceeding riches of the grace of God,” 

then it becomes in some measure true. Yet it is only in part. Much 

falseheartedness still remains. It clings too fondly to the creature. It 

cleaves to the dust. It is not wholly God’s. But this cannot be. God 

must have the heart; nay, and He must have it beating truly toward 

Him. He is jealous of our love, and grieves over its feebleness or 

its falling away. It is love that He wants, and with nothing but 

truehearted love will He be satisfied. For this it is that He chastises.

These false throbbings of the heart; these goings out after other 

objects than Himself He cannot suffer but must correct or else 

forego His claim. Hence, He smites and spares not till He has made 

us sensible of our guilt in this respect. He strips off the leaves 

whose beauty attracted us; He cuts down the flowers whose 

fragrance fascinated us; He tears off one string after another from 

the lyre whose music charmed us. Then when He has showed us 

each object of earth in its nakedness or deformity, then He presents 

Himself to us in the brightness of His own surpassing glory. And 

thus He wins the heart. Thus He makes it true to Him. Thus He 

makes us ashamed of our falseheartedness to Himself and to the 

Son of His love.

Yet this is no easy process. This training is hard and sore. The 

heart bleeds under it. Yet it must go on. No part of it can be spared. 

Nor will it cease till the heart is won! If the Chastener should stay 

His hand before this is effected, where would be His love? What 

poor, what foolish affection! He knew this when He said, “Let 

them alone”; and it was the last thing that His love consented to do, 

after all else had failed. One of the sharpest, sorest words He ever 

spoke to Israel was, “Why should ye be stricken any more?” Let us 

remember this, and not faint, even though the heart has been long 

bleeding. Let us remember it, and seek to make the sorrow shorter 

by gladly joining with Him in His plan for getting possession of 

our whole heart. We need not grudge it. He has “good measure” to 

give us in return. His love will taste the sweeter, and it will abide 

and satisfy us forever. It is well for us to be thus trained to love 

Him here, with whom, in love and fellowship unbroken, we are to 

spend the everlasting day.

4. It is the training of the conscience. A seared conscience is the 

sinner’s heritage. It is upon this that the Holy Spirit first lays His 

hand when He awakens the soul from its sleep of death. He 

touches the conscience, and then the struggles of conviction come. 

He then pacifies it by the sprinkling of the blood, showing it Jesus 

and His cross. Then giving it to taste forgiveness, it rests from all 

its tumults and fears. Thoughts of peace are ever breathed into it 

from the sight of the bleeding sacrifice. It trembles no more, for it 

sees that that which made it tremble is the very thing concerning 

which the blood of Christ speaks peace. “Their sins and their 

iniquities will I remember no more.” Thus it is softened. Its first 

terrors upon awakening could not be called a softening. But now 

conscious forgiveness and realized peace with God have been to it 

like the mild breath of spring to the ice of winter. It has become 

soft and tender. Yet only so in part.

God’s desire, however, is to make it altogether tender. He wishes it 

to be sensitive in regard to the very touch of sin, and earnest in its 

pantings after perfect holiness. To effect this, He afflicts; and 

affliction goes directly home to the conscience. The death of the 

widow’s son at Sarepta immediately awakened her conscience, and 

she cried to the prophet, “O man of God, art thou come to call my 

sin to remembrance?”(I Kings 17:18). So God by chastisement lays 

His finger upon the conscience, and forthwith it springs up into 

new life. We are made to feel as if God had now come down to us, 

as if He were now looking into our hearts and commencing a 

narrow search. Moreover, we see in this affliction God’s estimate 

of sin. Not, indeed, the full estimate. No, that we only learn from 

the sufferings of Jesus. But still we gather from this new specimen 

of sin’s bitter fruits somewhat of His mind regarding sin. This 

teaches the conscience by making the knowledge of sin a thing of 

experience—an experience that is deepening with every new trial. 

“If they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; 

then he showeth them their work, and their transgressions that they 

have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and 

commandeth that they return from iniquity”(Job 36:8-10).

In these last days how little is there of tenderness of conscience! 

The world seems to know nothing of it save the name. It is a world 

without a conscience! And how much do we find the Church of 

Christ a partaker in the world’s sins! “Evil communications corrupt 

good manners.” It is sad to observe in many saints, amid much zeal 

and energy and love, the lack of a tender conscience. For this God 

is smiting us, and will smite us yet more heavily until He has made 

it thoroughly tender and sensitive all over, “hating even the 

garments spotted by the flesh.” This training of the conscience is a 

thing of far greater moment than many deem it. God will not rest 

till He has wrought it. And if the saints still continue to overlook it, 

if they will not set themselves in good earnest to ask for it, and to 

strive against everything that would tend to produce searedness 

and insensibility, they may yet expect some of the sharpest strokes 

that the hand of God has ever yet administered.

Such, then, is the family discipline! We have seen it as it comes 

forth from God, and we have seen it as it operates upon man. And 

is it not all well? What is there about it that should disquiet us, or 

call forth one murmur either of the lip or heart? That which opens 

up to us so much more of God and lets us more fully into the 

secrets of His heart must be blessed, however hard to bear. That 

which discovers to us the evils within ourselves, which makes us 

teachable and wise, which gives to the stiff will, flexibility and 

obedience, which teaches the cold heart to love and expands each 

straitened affection, which melts the callous conscience into tender 

sensitiveness, which trains up the whole soul for the glorious 

kingdom—that must be precious indeed.

Besides, it is the Father’s will; and is not this enough for the 

trustful child? Is not chastisement just one of the methods by 

which He intimates to us what He would have us to be? Is not His 

way of leading us to the kingdom the safest, surest, shortest way? 

It is still the paternal hand that is guiding us. What though in 

seeking to lift us up to a higher level, it has to lay hold of us with a 

firmer, or it may be a rougher grasp? It is still the paternal voice 

“that speaketh unto us as unto children”—dear children—only in a 

louder, sharper tone to constrain the obedience of His too reluctant 

sons.

One remark more would I add to these concerning this family 

discipline. It is not designed even for a moment to separate them 

and their God, or to overshadow their souls with one suspicion of 

their Father’s heart. That it has done so at times, I know; but that it 

ought never to do so I am most firmly persuaded. Is it not one of 

the tests of sonship, and shall that, without which we are not 

accounted sons, make us doubt our sonship, or suspect the love of 

our God? That love claims at all times, whether in sorrow or in joy, 

our simple, fullhearted, peaceful confidence. It is at all times the 

same, and chastisement is but a more earnest expression of its 

infinite sincerity and depth. Let us do justice to it, and to Him out 

of whom it flows. Let us not give it the unworthy treatment which 

it too often receives at our thankless hands. Let us beware of 

“falling from grace” at the very time when God is coming down to 

us to spread out before us more largely than before all the treasures 

of His grace. “We have known and believed the love that God hath 

to us,” is to be our song. It ought always to be the family song! 

And shall it cease or sink low at the very time when it ought to be 

loudest and strongest? Should not trial just draw from us the 

apostle’s triumphant boast: “Who shall separate us from the love of 

Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or 

nakedness, or peril, or sword?” “Nay, in all these things we are 

more than conquerors through him that loved us; for I am 

persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 

nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 

depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the 

love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 835-39). For 

is it not just when we are brought under chastening that we enter 

upon the realities of consolation, the certainties of love, and the 

joys of heavenly fellowship in ways unknown and unimagined 

before?







Chapter 4

The Family Rods

We hear of the “rod of the wicked,” and we are told that it “shall 

not rest upon the lot of the righteous” (Psa 125:3). This may mean 

that wicked men are God’s rod for chastening His people, and that, 

though permitted to light upon them, it shall not rest or abide upon 

them, but shall be destroyed, as was the Assyrian, who was used 

by God as the “rod of his anger” for afflicting Israel. In this sense 

it gives us the blessed assurance that the triumph of the wicked 

over the saints is short, that their devices and oppressions shall last 

but for a moment, and that the church’s sufferings at their hands 

shall soon be over. Wicked men may be the sword of God, (Psa 

17:13) as was Pilate, when he lifted the sword against the man that 

was Jehovah’s friend, or as Herod was when he beheaded John in 

prison; but that sword shall soon be broken. A wound now and 

then it may inflict, but that is all. It neither moves nor smites save 

when God allows. Nor does it come, save with a blessing on its 

edge. “They mean it not so,” yet God means it, and that is enough 

for us. He makes the wrath of man to praise Him. “There shall no 

evil happen to the just; when he shall hear of evil tidings he shall 

not be afraid.”

But the “rod of the wicked” may mean that rod with which He 

smites the wicked in His fierce anger. In this sense there is no rod 

for the righteous. Such a rod never either lights upon them nor 

rests upon them. Their rod is not the rod of the wicked. It is the 

family rod. They have done with wrath. Over them no curse can 

ever rest. “There is . . . no condemnation to them that are in Christ 

Jesus.” The rod may seem to speak of frowns and anger, but it is 

only a seeming; there is not a glance of vengeance in the 

Chastener’s eye. It is a correcting rod, but not a destroying one. Its 

object is not to punish but to chasten; not to injure but to bless. 

“God distributeth sorrows in his anger,” (Job 21:17) but these are 

not for His saints.

God has, however, not one rod for His children, but many. For 

each child He has a peculiar rod, and at different times He uses 

different rods. It will be profitable for us to consider what those 

are, and how they are applied.

1. Bodily sickness. The body operates very powerfully upon the 

soul both for good and for evil. In what way or to what extent we 

cannot tell. Nor do I wish to discuss this question at all. But, 

knowing how the soul is acted on by the body, I cannot help think 

that one of God’s designs in sickness is to operate upon the soul 

through the body. We are not conscious of this; we cannot analyze 

the process; the effects are hidden from view. Yet it does seem as 

if sickness of body were made to contribute directly to the health 

of the soul in some way or other known only to God. Hence, the 

apostle speaks of delivering “such an one unto Satan for the 

destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of 

the Lord Jesus” (I Cor 5:5). On this point, however, I do not dwell; 

only it would be well for us to consider whether God is not by this 

intimating to us the exceeding danger of pampering the flesh: for 

the weakening of the flesh does help forward the strengthening of 

the spirit; and the mortifying of our members which are upon the 

earth—the crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts—does 

tend to quicken and invigorate the soul. Apart from this, however, 

there are other things to be kept in view.

Sickness prostrates us. It cuts into the very center of our carnal 

nature; it exposes in all their deformity “the lust of the flesh, the 

lust of the eye, and the pride of life.” What vanity is seen in these 

upon a sickbed! These are our three idols; and these, sickness 

dashes down into the dust.

Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken 

into His private chamber, and there He converses with us face to 

face. The world is far off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone 

with God. Many are the words of grace and truth which He then 

speaks to us. All our former props are struck away, and we must 

now lean on God alone. The things of earth are felt to be vanity; 

man’s help useless. Man’s praise and man’s sympathy desert us; 

we are cast wholly upon God that we may learn that His praise and 

His sympathy are enough. “If it were not for pain,” says one, “I 

should spend less time with God. If I had not been kept awake with 

pain, I should have lost one of the sweetest experiences I ever had 

in my life. The disorder of my body is the very help I want from 

God; and if it does its work before it lays me in the dust, it will 

raise me up to Heaven.” It was thus that Job was “chastened upon 

his bed with pain, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain,” 

that after being tried he might “come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

Sickness teaches that activity of service is not the only way in 

which God is glorified. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” 

Active duty is that which man judges most acceptable; but God 

shows us that in bearing and suffering He is also glorified. Perhaps 

we were pursuing a path of our own and required to be arrested. 

Perhaps we were too much harassed by a bustling world and 

needed retirement, yet could find no way of obtaining it till God 

laid us down, and drew us aside into a desert place, because of the 

multitude pressing upon us.

No one of the family rods is more in use than this, sometimes 

falling lightly on us, at other times more heavily. Let us kiss the 

rod. Let us open our mouth wide to the blessing, seeking so to 

profit by each bodily ailment, slight or severe, that it may bring 

forth in us the peaceable fruits of righteousness. “I know,” says 

one, “of no greater blessing than health, except pain and sickness.”

2. Bereavement. This is the bitterest of all earthly sorrows. It is the 

sharpest arrow in the quiver of God. To love tenderly and deeply 

and then to part; to meet together for the last time on earth; to bid 

farewell for time; to have all past remembrances of home and 

kindred broken up—this is the reality of sorrow. To look upon that 

face that shall smile on us no more; to close those eyes that shall 

see us no more; to press those lips that shall speak to us no more; 

to stand by the cold side of father, mother, brother, sister, friend, 

yet hear no sound and receive no greeting; to carry to the tomb the 

beloved of our hearts, and then to return to a desolate home with a 

blank in one region of our souls, which shall never again be filled 

till Jesus come with all His saints; this is the bitterness of grief; this 

is the wormwood and the gall!

It is this rod which ever and anon God is laying upon us. Nor is 

there any that we need more than this. By it He is making room for 

Himself in hearts that had been filled with other objects and 

engrossed with other loves. He is jealous of our affection, for He 

claims it all as His own; and every idol He will utterly abolish. For 

our sakes as well as for His own He can suffer no rival in the heart. 

Perhaps the joys of an earthly home are stealing away our hearts 

from the many mansions above. God breaks in upon us in mercy 

and turns that home into a wilderness. Our sin finds us out; we 

mourn over it and seek anew to realize our heavenly citizenship 

and set out anew upon our pilgrim way, alone and yet not alone, 

for the Father is with us. Perhaps we are sitting “at ease in Zion,” 

comfortable and contented, amid the afflictions of a suffering 

Church and the miseries of a world that owns no Saviour and fears 

no God. Jehovah speaks and we awake. He takes to Himself some 

happy saint, or smites to the dust some wretched sinner. We are 

troubled at the stroke. We mourn our lethargy. While we slept, a 

fellow-saint has gone up to be with Christ, and a fellow-sinner has 

gone down to be with the devil and his angels. The death of the 

one stirs us up; the death of the other solemnizes and overawes us.

Thus as saint after saint ascends to God, we begin to feel that 

Heaven is far more truly the family home than earth. We have far 

more brethren above than we have below. And each bereavement 

reminds us of this. It reminds us, too, that the coming of the Lord 

draweth nigh, and makes us look out more wistfully from our 

eastern casement for the first streaks of the rising dawn. It kindles 

in us strong desires for the day of happy meeting in our Father’s 

house, when we shall clasp inseparable hands and climb in 

company the everlasting hills. Meanwhile it bids us give our hearts 

to Jesus only. It does for us what the departure of the two strangers 

from Heaven did to the disciples on the Mount of 

Transfiguration—it leaves us alone with Jesus. It turns into deep 

experience that longing for home contained in the apostle’s words, 

“having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far 

better.”

The more that bereavement transforms earth into a desert, the more 

are our desires drawn up to Heaven. Our treasures having been 

transferred to Heaven, our hearts must follow them. Earth’s hopes 

are smitten, and we are taught to look for “that blessed hope, the 

glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” 

The night is falling and the flowers are folding up; but as they do 

so they bid us look upward and see star after star appearing upon 

the darkening sky.

3. Adversity. This may be the loss of substance, or it may be the 

loss of our good name, or it may be the falling away of friends, or 

it may be the wrath of enemies, or it may be the disappointment of 

our hopes these are what is meant by adversity. But let Job tell us 

what it means. “Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built 

again, he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening” (Job 

12:14). “He hath made me weary: thou hast made desolate all my 

company.... I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder: he hath 

also taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces, and set me up 

for his mark; his archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my 

reins asunder, and doth not spare; . . . he breaketh me with breach 

upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant.... My face is foul 

with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death” (Job 

16:7,12,13,14,16). “My days are past, my purposes are broken off, 

even the thoughts of my heart” (Job 17:11). “He hath fenced up my 

way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths; he 

hath stripped me of my glory and taken the crown from my head; 

he hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope 

hath he removed like a tree . . . He hath put my brethren far from 

me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me” (Job 

19:8-10,13). These are some of the drops in the bitter cup of 

adversity that was given to that patient saint to drink. And they are 

recorded for our use, on whom the ends of the world have come, 

and to whom these last days may perhaps fill a cup as bitter and 

protracted as his.

Yet let us count it all joy when we fall into divers tribulations, 

knowing this, that the trying of our faith worketh patience: but “let 

patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, 

wanting nothing” (James 1:2-4). We are cast into poverty, but how 

can we be poor so long as Christ is rich; and is not this poverty 

sent to make us prize His unsearchable riches and to buy of Him 

the gold tried in the fire that we may be rich? Our good name is 

lost through slander and false accusation. The finger of public 

scorn is perhaps pointed at us, and wicked men are exalted over us 

triumphing in our reproach. Yet have we not the approving eye of 

God, and is it not enough if He still honors us and knows our 

innocence? Let our good name go if God sees fit thus to humble 

us. We have the “white stone, and in the stone a new name written, 

which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it” (Rev 2:17).

Friends fall off and enemies arise: false brethren turn against us, 

and we are doomed to bear the revilings and persecutions of those 

whom we have never wronged but ever loved. But the friendship 

of Jesus is still ours. No earthly disaster or persecutor can ever rob 

us of that. Nay, the coldness of those we counted on as tried and 

true only draws us the closer to Him, the warmth of whose love 

knows no abatement nor end. Joseph passed thoroughly this trial, 

and the Lord set him upon Pharaoh’s throne.

Moses passed through it and became “king in Jeshurun.” Job 

passed through it and was blessed a thousandfold. Daniel passed 

through it and was exalted with double honor. Let us “take . . . the 

prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an 

example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count 

them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, 

and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and 

of tender mercy” (James 5:10,11).

Oftentimes nothing but adversity will do for us. “I spake unto thee 

in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. This hath been 

thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not my voice” (Jer 

22:21). We need to be stripped of every earthly portion that we 

may seek entirely our portion in Jehovah Himself. We need to be 

turned out of a home on earth that we may seek a home in Heaven. 

Earth’s music is too seducing and takes away our relish for the new 

song. God must either hush it or take us apart into a desert place 

that we may no longer be led captive by it but may have our ear 

open only to the heavenly melody. We cannot be trusted with too 

full a cup, or too pleasant a resting-place. We abuse everything that 

God has given us, and prove ourselves not trustworthy as to any 

one of them. Some God cannot trust with health; they need 

sickness to keep them low and make them walk softly all their 

days. They need spare diet, lest the flesh should get the mastery. 

Others He cannot trust with prosperity; they need adversity to 

humble them, lest, like Jeshurun, they should wax “fat and kick.” 

Others He cannot trust with riches; they must be kept poor, lest 

covetousness should spring up and pierce them through with many 

sorrows. Others He cannot trust with friends; they make idols of 

them, they give their hearts to them; and this interferes with the 

claims of Jehovah to have us altogether as His own.

But still in all this God dealeth with us as with the members of His 

own family. Never for a moment does He lose sight of this. Neither 

should we. So that when these things overtake us, when we are 

thus “judged,” we should feel that we are “chastened of the Lord, 

that we should not be condemned with the world”; we should learn 

not merely to submit to the rod, but to kiss and welcome it, not 

merely to acquiesce in chastisement, but to “glory in tribulation, 

knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience 

experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed.” 

We should learn not merely to praise God in affliction, but to 

praise Him for it. We should see that the lot of the afflicted is far 

more enviable than that of him who is “let alone”; and, instead of 

trembling when we see the dark cloud of sorrow coming over us, 

we should tremble far more when we see it passing off, lest, 

perchance, that which came charged with blessing to us, should, 

through our stoutheartedness and unteachableness, leave us callous 

and unblessed.







Chapter 4

The Types

The ordinance in Israel concerning the meat-offering of the 

firstfruits was of a very peculiar kind. Thus it was commanded, “If 

thou offer a meat-offering of thy firstfruits unto the Lord, thou 

shalt offer for the meat-offering of thy firstfruits, green ears of corn 

dried by the fire” (Lev 2:14).

Christ is, we know, preeminently the firstfruits. It is He, then, who 

is specially prefigured by these green ears of corn dried by the fire. 

In this “corn” we discern the type of one who belongs to earth, 

partaker of our very nature. It springs up in our fields, it is 

nourished by our soil, it is watered by our showers, it is ripened by 

our sun. So was it with Jesus. He was truly Man, one of us, “the 

Word made flesh,” the Man who “drank of the brook by the way.”

This corn was to be plucked when green and then dried by the fire, 

not in the ordinary gradual way by the heat of the sun. It was to be 

prematurely ripened by what we would call unnatural means, the 

exposure to artificial heat. In this also we see Jesus, the Man of 

sorrows, subjected to the Father’s wrath, the wrath of Him who is a 

consuming fire, and withered into ripeness before His time. He did 

not come to His grave “in a full age, like a shock of corn in its 

season” (Job 5:26). He did not grow up to manhood in the calm, 

refreshing sunshine of Jehovah’s smile.

He was scorched with fiery heat, within and without, till age 

appeared upon His much-marred visage, while as yet the greenness 

of His strength was upon Him, so that the Jews, looking upon His 

wasted form, spoke of Him as one who had well-nigh reached his 

fiftieth year (John 8:57).

Such is the view He gives of Himself in the Book of Psalms. In 

these we at once recognize the “green ears of corn dried by the 

fire.” For thus He speaks, “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; 

and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me unto 

the dust of death” (Psa 22:15). Again, He says, “Mine eye is 

consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly; for my life is 

spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth . . . 

my bones are consumed” (Psa 31:9). Again, we hear Him saying, 

“Mine eye is consumed because of grief; it waxeth old because of 

all mine enemies” (Psa 6:7). Such, then, was Jesus: withered and 

dried up before His time by reason of the sorrow which He 

endured for us.

But these green ears dried up by the fire are no less a description of 

the saints than of their Lord. Certainly they apply to Him in a way 

such as they never can apply to us. Yet they do stand forth as a 

type of the whole Church, who are also called like Jesus, “the 

firstfruits.” All the members of His body from the beginning have 

been just such as these dried ears of green corn. Hear, for instance, 

one of them speaking, “I am like a bottle in the smoke”; or again, 

“My bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long . . . my 

moisture is turned into the drought of summer” (Psa 32:3,4).

By such an emblem as this was the Church’s career of tribulation 

set before Israel. And it is most interesting for us to look at our 

trials in the light of so expressive a figure. Their object is to ripen 

us: it may be before the time; it may be in a way such as the flesh 

shrinks from; but still their object is to ripen us. The sorrows that 

compass us about are all ripening our graces, as well as withering 

out of us the green, rank, unripe luxuriance of earth. The heat may 

be great, but it shall not consume us; it will only make the ripening 

process a speedier one. It will shorten the way to perfect holiness 

and eternal glory; and shall we shrink from that which makes the 

process shorter?

But there was another ordinance in Israel setting forth the 

tribulation of the Church. The mercy seat and the cherubim were to 

be both made of pure gold, “of beaten work” (Exo 25:17,18). Now, 

as the cherubim were doubtless the symbols of redeemed men, the 

Church of Christ, this type is very striking. Both the mercy seat 

and the cherubim were to be of one piece, for “both he who 

sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one.” They are of 

pure gold, and this denotes their exceeding preciousness. They are 

made of “beaten gold,” to intimate the process through which they 

both had passed. The mercy seat was fashioned into shape and 

made after the pattern showed in the mount by the stroke of the 

hammer. So Jesus was “made perfect through suffering.” In like 

manner the cherubim were to be beaten into the intended shape and 

model. So with the saints. It is through this process that they must 

pass, and it is thus they are brought into that perfect shape which 

God has designed for them.

What, then, is the process through which the saints are passing 

now but just this? They are now under the hammer of the Spirit, 

that by this they may be fashioned into the likeness of cherubim, 

which in the Book of Revelation are set before us as the upbearers 

of Jehovah’s throne and glory, as well as the inheritors thereof. 

And what is all the “beating” to which we may be subjected when 

compared with the glory for which it is preparing us?

There is another figure used by our Lord in speaking of His 

Church. He compares her to an injured, afflicted, friendless widow. 

Widowhood, then, is properly the Church’s condition here. And 

this is her grief. Her Lord is absent, and His absence is one of her 

bitterest trials. It forms one long-continued sorrow. It makes such a 

blank on earth that we feel as if this of itself were grief enough, 

even were there none besides. And were the Church to realize fully 

her estate of widowhood, until the Lord come, she would find in 

this, no doubt, a new grief to which she was blind before, but a 

grief which operates with most blessed efficacy in sanctifying her 

and in keeping her apart from the world.

She is a stranger in a land of strangers. She is lonely and 

unfriended, sitting apart from earthly joy and fellowship. He whom 

she loves is far away. This separation is, as a saint of old expresses 

it, “like a mountain of iron upon her heavy heart.” She longs to be 

with Him. She sighs for the day of meeting. And all this though 

sad is both sanctifying and solemnizing. It is a daily burden, a 

continual chastening, yet it is well. It loosens from earth. It lifts up 

to Heaven. It makes the world less fascinating. It prepares for the 

inseparable union: the meeting time—the bridal day.

There are other figures given us of the suffering Church. But let 

these suffice. They will help us to understand our true condition 

and to expect nothing else than tribulation here No strange thing is 

happening to us. It is no strange thing that the green ears of corn 

should be dried with fire.

It is no strange thing that the cherubim should be made of beaten 

gold. It is no strange thing that, in the absence of the Bridegroom, 

the bride should mourn.







Chapter 7

The Proving

There are no beings about whom we make so many mistakes as our 

own selves. “The heart is deceitful above all things,” and besides 

this, the “deceitfulness of sin” is unsearchable. So that when the 

deceitfulness of our heart and the deceitfulness of sin come 

together, we need not wonder that the effect should be ignorance of 

ourselves.

Besides, we are unwilling to search. We shrink from the exposure 

which such a scrutiny would make. No doubt the consciousness of 

being forgiven takes away much of this reluctance. We are not so 

unwilling to know the worst when we are assured that however 

hideous the pollution thus dragged to light, it can never come 

between us and God. For with God all is peace. The blood that 

sprinkles us has made it a simple impossibility for God ever to be 

angry with us again. So that we come to realize in some degree the 

blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven; our spirit 

is “without guile.” We have no object now in concealing anything 

from God or ourselves. We become open, frank, straightforward. 

Still the search is a painful one, and we would rather postpone it. It 

might bring many things to light which would shock and humble 

us. It might alarm us with the extent of the evil which still remains 

in us, even though it could not bring us into condemnation. Hence, 

we are slow to learn, or even to inquire into, the evil that cleaves to 

us still.

Moreover, we are not at all persuaded that there is so very much 

evil in us. We do not know ourselves. Our convictions of sin have 

been but shallow, and we are beginning to imagine that the conflict 

between the flesh and the spirit is not so very fierce and deadly as 

we had conceived it to be. We think we have rid ourselves of many 

of our sins entirely, and are in a fair way speedily getting rid of all 

the rest. The depths of sin in us we have never sounded; the 

number of our abominations we have never thought of marking. 

We have been sailing smoothly to the kingdom, and perhaps at 

times were wondering how our lot should be so different from the 

saints of old. We thought, too, that we had overcome many of our 

corruptions. The old man was crucified. It seemed dead, or at least 

feigned itself to be so in order to deceive us. Our lusts had abated. 

Our tempers had improved. Our souls were calm and equable. Our 

mountain stood strong, and we were saying, “We shall never be 

moved.” The victory over self and sin seemed, in some measure, 

won. Alas, we were blind! We were profoundly ignorant of our 

hearts.

Well, the trial came. It swept over us like a cloud of the night, or 

rather through us like an icy blast, piercing and chilling us to the 

vitals. Then the old man within us awoke, and, as if in response to 

the uproar without, a fiercer tempest broke loose within. We felt as 

if the four winds of Heaven had been let loose to strive together 

upon the great deep within us. Unbelief arose in its former 

strength. Rebelliousness raged in every region of our soul. 

Unsubdued passions resumed their strength. We were utterly 

dismayed at the fearful scene. But yesterday this seemed 

impossible. Alas, we know not the strength of sin nor the evil of 

our hearts till God thus allowed them to break loose.

It was thus He dealt with Israel; and for this end He led them into 

the desert. “The Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the 

wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in 

thine heart” (Deu 8:2). Their desert trials put them to the proof. 

And when thus proved, what iniquity was found in them! What sin 

came out which had lain hidden and unknown before! The trial did 

not create the evil: it merely brought out what was there already, 

unnoticed and unfelt, like a torpid adder. Then the heart’s deep 

fountains were broken up, and streams of pollution came rushing 

out, black as Hell. Rebellion, unbelief, fretfulness, atheism, 

idolatry, self-will, self-confidence, self-pleasing—all burst out 

when the blast of the desert met them in the face and called Egypt 

to remembrance with its luxurious plenty. Thus they were proved.

Even so it is with the saints still. God chastens them that He may 

draw forth the evil that is lying concealed and unsuspected within. 

The rod smites us on the tenderest part, and we start up in a 

moment as if in arms against God. The flesh, the old man, is cut to 

the quick, and forthwith arouses itself, displaying all of a sudden 

much of its former strength. When it was asleep we did not know 

its power, but now that it has been awakened, its remains of 

strength appall us.

It is not till the sea is “troubled,” that “its waters cast up mire and 

dirt.” When all was calm, there seemed naught but purity 

pervading it, and ripple folded over ripple in the still brightness of 

its transparent green. But the winds break loose, the tempest stirs 

its lowest depths, and then all is changed. Thus we see it in the 

saints. When calamity breaks over them like a tempest, then the 

hidden evils of their hearts awaken. Sins scarcely known before 

display themselves. The heart pours out its wickedness. Hard 

thoughts of God arise. Atheistical murmurings break out and refuse 

to be restrained.

Questionings both of His wisdom and of His love are muttered; 

yea, how often do they assume a more explicit form, and we ask, 

“If God be so loving and wise, why is it thus?” We could not have 

expected such treatment at His hands. Distrust and unbelief assume 

the mastery, and we refuse to acquiesce to His will. It seems hard 

to be smitten so severely and laid so low. For a while it seems as if 

the heart were determined to think evil thoughts of God and never 

to think well of Him again. And, though a calm ensues and we 

become both ashamed and terrified at our rebelliousness, still the 

heart has given forth its pollution. We have learned its 

unsearchable depths of evil. We are led, on the one hand, into 

deeper views of our own amazing and incredible vileness; and on 

the other, into fuller discoveries of the abounding grace of God. 

We learn to prize more the open fountain, and we betake ourselves 

anew for covering to the righteousness of the Righteous One.

It is remarkable that when the saints of old were tried and proved, 

there was found in them not only evil but the very evil we should 

least of all have anticipated. We should have said of Noah, for 

instance, that he was one whose sobriety and self-restraint would 

be carried with him to his grave. He stood alone amid a luxurious, 

sensual, intoxicated world, condemning their lasciviousness and 

revelry. Yet no sooner is he placed in circumstances of temptation 

than he falls. Noah becomes drunken!

Again, Abraham stands out preeminent for faith and courage; yet, 

when he goes to Egypt and Gerar, his faith gives way, and he utters 

lies through fear. Lot had withstood all the sensuality and filthiness 

of Sodom, and his righteous soul mourned over their abominations; 

yet, scarce is he delivered from the city’s destruction than he falls 

into drunkenness and lust equal to that of the cities that had been 

consumed. Job, though marked for his patience, gave way to 

impatience in the day of trial. Moses, the meekest of all men, 

displayed his anger and “spake unadvisedly with his lips.” David 

was one of the bravest that ever fought the battles of the Lord in 

Israel, and he had gone out against Goliath with a sling and a 

stone, yet when he fled before Saul and came to King Achish at 

Gath, his courage was gone, and he feigned himself a madman 

through fear of his enemies. Elijah had stood before kings without 

trembling to pronounce the sentence of judgment, to shut up the 

heavens, and to wield the sword of Jehovah’s vengeance, though 

alone amid tens of thousands. Yet he flees before a woman’s 

threat, he gives up all for lost and requests to die.

Ezekiel, whose character shines out as one of singular holiness and 

obedience, yet records against himself a strange instance of 

unsubmissiveness, when sent by God on an errand of judgment to 

Israel: “I went in bitterness, in the heat [marg. hot anger] of my 

spirit; but the hand of the Lord was strong upon me (Exe 3:14). 

Peter’s attachment to his Lord is one of his peculiar characteristics, 

yet it was Peter who denied Him. John was the disciple who seems 

to have been most like his Master in gentleness and love, yet it was 

John who wanted to call down fire from Heaven upon the 

Samaritan village.

Lord, what is man! And what is a human heart—the heart even of 

thy saints when proved and held up to view? “O heart, heart,” said 

John Berridge of himself, “what art thou? A mass of fooleries and 

absurdities, the vainest, wickedest, craftiest, foolishest thing in 

nature.” What deep-hidden evil, what selfishness, what pride, what 

harsh tempers, what worldliness come out in a moment, when the 

stroke goes deep into the soul! How long Job remained steadfast, 

holding fast his integrity and confidence in God! Stroke after 

stroke laid him prostrate, yet he gave glory to God in the midst of 

desolation and sorrow. The inner circle of self had not been 

reached. But when a loathsome disease drove him to the dunghill, 

and his friends rose up against him and addressed him as a man 

marked out by God as guilty then his faith and patience gave way. 

The very center of his being had been reached and probed; and 

forth came the stream of impatience and unbelief. It takes a sharp 

arrow and a strongly drawn bow to pierce into the inmost circle; 

yet God in kindness spares not. The seat of the disease must be 

reached, and its real nature brought out to the light.

Of all the evils which are thus drawn forth from the heart of the 

saint, the worst, and yet the commonest, are hard thoughts of God. 

Yet who would have expected this? Once, indeed, in our 

unbelieving days our souls were full of these. Our thoughts of God 

were all evil together. When the Holy Spirit wrought in our hearts 

the mighty change, the special thing which He accomplished was 

teaching us to think well of God, showing us how little He had 

deserved these hard thoughts from us, how much He had deserved 

the opposite. The wondrous tale of manifold love, which the 

Gospel brought to us, won our hearts and made us ashamed of our 

distrust. We said then, Surely we shall never think ill of God again. 

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” We thought that 

affliction would only make us cleave to Him the more. Yet 

scarcely does He begin to smite us than our former thoughts return. 

We wonder why He should treat us thus. We suspect His love and 

faithfulness. Our hold of His grace seems to loosen, as if at times it 

would wholly give way.

We are like Jonah with his withered gourd. We think we do well to 

be angry even unto death. God does not seem the same loving God 

as when first we believed and tasted forgiveness from His gracious 

hands. Alas, the treachery of our hearts has been at length 

discovered. We find that we were not serving God for naught.

May He not expostulate with us and ask us, “Doest thou well to be 

angry?” Would not this question close our lips forever? Doest thou 

well to be angry or desponding, when God hath forgiven all thine 

iniquities and removed them from thee, as far as the East is from 

the West? Doest thou well to be angry when thou art delivered 

from the wrath to come, as well as from a present evil world, and 

safely lodged within the clefts of the rock with Jesus as thy 

companion there? Doest thou well to be angry when the Father’s 

love is thine assured portion, and the kingdom of the Son thine 

inheritance forever? Doest thou well to be angry when the night is 

far spent and the day is at hand, when the distant eastern clouds are 

taking on their rosy fringes, and the daystar is preparing to arise? 

[2]









Chapter 8

The Rebuking

It is worthwhile noticing the word which is used in the two 

well-known passages which speak of chastisement, “Nor faint 

when thou are rebuked of him” (Heb 12:5). “As many as I love, I 

rebuke and chasten” (Rev 3:19). A little inquiry into its meaning 

and a little comparing of texts will help to set it in its true light.

It is the same word used in Matthew 18:15: “If thy brother shall 

trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault.” It is the same word 

used in Luke 3:19, when John is said to have reproved Herod. It is 

the same word used in John 16:8, “When he is come, he will 

reprove the world of sin.” We learn, then, from these expressions, 

that rebuke is not simply some stern word or frown, implying 

displeasure on the part of God, but such a frown which “tells us 

our faults”—such a frown which reproves or convicts us of sin. It 

is God’s way of pointing out what He sees to be amiss in us, of 

calling our attention to it as a thing which displeases Him, and, on 

account of which, if not put away, He must certainly deal with us 

in chastisement.

The word rebuke seems to imply something more gentle than 

chastisement. And it is of some importance to consider it in this 

light. I know not a better illustration of it than Christ’s address to 

the Churches of Asia. The especial preciousness of these lies in 

this that they show us what the heart of Christ is when reproving. 

What a discovery do they give us of this! Let us hear Him 

addressing them. Thus He rebukes the angel of the Church of 

Ephesus. “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because 

thou has left thy first love; remember therefore from whence thou 

art fallen, and repent.” Thus He rebukes the church of Pergamos: 

“I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that 

hold the doctrine of Balaam . . . repent, or else I will come unto 

thee quickly, and will fight against thee with the sword of my 

mouth.” In like manner we might quote His other rebukes to the 

other churches as illustrations of our meaning. But these are 

enough. They show the gentleness of the Reprover both in the 

manner and the language. They are faithful, indeed, but how 

delicate, how tender, how mild! They point out what is amiss with 

all distinctness and directness, yet in a manner the most fitted to 

win and in language the least likely to offend. He begins each of 

them by making most gracious mention of the past services and 

excellent deeds of the angel of the church, as if desirous to show 

how willing He was to praise, insofar as He could, and how 

unwilling to blame, save when it could not be avoided. In listening 

to this voice speaking from Heaven, we seem to hear the same 

meek and lowly One that once spake on earth in the house of 

Simon the Pharisee. Wishing to reprove him for his evil thoughts 

of the woman who stood behind the Lord and washed His feet with 

her tears, He began thus mildly His rebuke, “Simon, I have 

somewhat to say unto thee.”

Yet while the rebuke of God is thus mild and loving, it is both 

faithful and solemn. It is faithful, for it hides nothing from us. Its 

tone is soft, yet the words are full of meaning. They are quite 

explicit in their condemnation of the sin perceived in us. And the 

rebuke of Jehovah is a solemn thing not the rebuke of wrath, for 

that has passed away, yet it makes us stand in awe. The rebuke of 

love is as solemn a thing as the rebuke of wrath. A parent’s rebuke 

is much to a loving child, how much more is the rebuke of our 

God—the God who made Heaven and earth!

Many are the rebukes which He administers. Some of them are 

lighter and others heavier. Yet in both He is laying His finger upon 

sin and intimating distinctly His desire that we should turn from it. 

To the former kind I fear we oftentimes give but little heed. The 

touch of transient pain, a brief illness, a slight indisposition, a 

passing weakness, some common domestic vexation, some trivial 

casualty, some few days parting from one we love, some unkind 

word where least we looked for it, some disappointment or 

annoyance—these are all fatherly rebukes of the lighter and gentler 

kind. They are not so sharp as many others, yet they are not the 

less on that account the indications of a father’s will. They are apt 

to be overlooked, for they are slighter and commoner than many 

and do not force themselves upon our notice. Yet surely it is worth 

our while to point them out and to make them the subject of special 

and prolonged consideration.

It is difficult to understand why we should so much undervalue 

them. To one who weighs them aright, they cannot but seem 

peculiarly precious and affecting. Their frequency makes us 

familiar with them, and on this account we slight them. Sad and 

strange! Does not their frequency show the unwearied pains that 

God is taking with us, giving us precept upon precept, line upon 

line? Should that very thing in them which displays God’s untiring 

earnestness, His assiduous vigilance, and intense anxiety for our 

welfare tempt us to disregard such dealings? Their mildness, also, 

as well as their frequency, tends to make us undervalue them. 

Unaccountable perversity! They are so slight and so gentle; 

therefore, they are not to be owned as the laying on of a father’s 

hand! Had they been sharper and heavier they would have been 

recognized as such, but being so tender they are hardly worthy of 

our serious notice!

On this point I am persuaded that an admonition is much needed, 

not merely by a heedless world, but even by the saints of God. The 

point adverted to is a much neglected one, and yet it is one which 

every day’s events press upon our notice. A raging fever prostrates 

us. Our strength gives way. Our life is despaired of. Then we say, 

“This is the finger of God. This is His rebuke.” But we take a slight 

cold, or sustain some slight injury—there is no danger and perhaps 

no piercing pain—then, alas! we do not own the doing of God; or, 

at the most, we own it vaguely and carelessly. The gentleness of 

the infliction makes us feel at liberty to undervalue it, and to forget 

it as coming from God. Ah! it is thus that we “despise his 

chastenings.”

And what is the consequence? We draw upon ourselves severer 

chastisement. We provoke God to visit us with heavier blows. We 

compel Him to chastise by our heedlessness of His rebuke. We 

make bitter trial absolutely necessary.

Let us never forget this. It is our own frowardness and negligence 

that impose a necessity for the infliction of suffering. Affliction is 

not a desirable thing in itself. It would be better could it be 

avoided. God afflicts not willingly. But we constrain Him. Many a 

sorrow we might escape were we not so heedless and unbelieving.

Most slowly and reluctantly does God stretch out His hand to 

chasten. For a while He wounds most slightly and mildly. If we 

may speak after the manner of men, He just hints or whispers His 

reproof. He is most unwilling to employ sharpness. He tarries long. 

He lingers on His way to smite. He tries other means. He sends 

milder trials first that we may be led to self-searching and 

repentance and that He may be spared the necessity of inflicting a 

heavier blow. But we trifle with these; and then, at last, He lifts up 

His voice and speaks in a way which can neither be overlooked nor 

mistaken. How sad that we should thus so stubbornly persist in 

filling the cup of sorrow which God would fain have spared us!

Let us open our ears to the rebuke of God. His “still small voice” 

should be as effectual as the lightning or the earthquake. Let us 

learn the meaning and use of slighter trials. Let us count no touch 

of pain or grief, however mild or transient, too insignificant for our 

most serious thought. This would save us much. It would teach us 

many a blessed lesson in an easy, pleasant way. Every trouble, 

however light, comes fragrant with blessing. Shall we then 

overlook it or thrust it away? It is a new opportunity of getting 

nearer God and learning more of His love. How foolish, how 

sinful, to disregard it! God is saying to us, “Improve this light 

cross, and you will not need a heavier.” But we are deaf. And, oh, 

how much this deafness costs us!

It is not, however, our deafness under light troubles only that 

draws on us the heavier. We are too heedless even of these heavier 

ones, and this prepares for us heavier still. The easy way in which 

some get over trials is very sad. There is a vehement outburst of 

feeling at the moment; and occasionally there may be a recurrence 

of this for some time after the calamity has spent itself, but, with 

the exception of such fits of grief, there is nothing like laying the 

trial to heart. To lay a visitation solemnly to heart is something 

very different from indulging in wild bursts of grief. Hence, it will 

generally be found that those who give way to these are often, 

during the intervals between them, very easy and mirthful. This 

unequal pressure of trial is not only in itself injurious to the soul, 

but it neutralizes the right influence of trial, and thus renders 

necessary another and more stunning blow.

Hence, it is that we so often observe that when God takes up a case 

in earnest, if anyone may so speak, it is either by a succession of 

strokes, following each other closely, or else by a long protracted 

sorrow. And it is we who procure these things unto ourselves, in 

that we have forsaken the Lord our God, whom He led by the way 

(Jer 2:17). Billow after billow breaks over us, but we ourselves 

have called forth the storm; and it is our perversity that is keeping 

it alive, nay, perhaps, raising the surges higher till we are well-nigh 

overwhelmed. Had we but yielded to God at once, and allowed 

Him to bless us as He desired, one wave might have been enough, 

and ere evening the storm breeze might have died away.

Yet, even in this there is consolation. Our foolishness is making 

our voyage a rough one, but it is homeward bound. All these many 

blasts and billows are toward Canaan, not away from it; and 

sometimes, from their topmost crest, we get a brighter glimpse of 

our eternal heritage than from the level calm of more unruffled 

days. It brightens the blackness of the tempest, and disarms it of 

many a terror to know that each blast, however fierce, is bearing us 

homeward, that each billow, however rough, is carrying us more 

swiftly to our desired haven.









Chapter 9

The Purifying

Chastisement supposes sin. Suffering does not, for Jesus suffered, 

nay, “learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” But 

chastisement does. Some have, indeed, applied the word 

chastisement to Jesus also, for He was “made perfect through 

suffering,” and in the sense of passing through discipline that He 

might know by experience our condition here and be seen as the 

doer of the Father’s will, the Man that “pleased not himself”—in 

this sense His sorrows might be called by that name. Yet in no 

other. For although tempted in all points like as we are, He was 

without sin. But in our case it is altogether different. It is sin in us 

that draws down the infliction, just as the rod attracts the lightning 

from the clouds.

Yet it is all forgiven sin. In looking to the cross we found 

forgiveness. As believers in Jesus, we “have no more conscience of 

sin.” Still the flesh remains. The old man is ever at work within us. 

“Iniquities prevail against us”; and though we know that they are 

purged away, still they cleave to us. Our nature is still defiled 

though our conscience has been cleansed. It is against sin still 

existing within us, though forgiven, that chastisement is directed.

The casting of gold or silver into the furnace implies that there is 

dross upon them that requires to be purged out with fire. Were 

there no dross, there would be no need for furnace or fire or 

refiner’s labor. These are but means of getting rid of the dross. The 

fire which the Lord is to kindle in the earth, when He comes again, 

proves that sin is found upon it. Were there no curse lying on the 

earth no purifying fire would be needed. But the blight must be 

burned out, the trail of the serpent must be swept clean away; and 

therefore the earth must be cast into the furnace that out of it may 

come a new and more glorious creation, fit for God to look upon, 

and for holy men to dwell in, and from which, therefore, every 

trace of corruption must be totally erased.

So with chastisement. It has reference to sin. Were it not for sin 

chastisement would be unknown. In Heaven there is no 

chastisement, for there is no sin. Angels know nothing of it, for 

they know no sin. They see it afar off. They hear the sad story of 

earth. They witness the tribulations of the Church, but that is all. 

For it is only where there is sin that there is chastisement. Its 

existence here is just God’s voice, saying, “I have found iniquity 

upon the earth.” Its infliction on an individual is God saying, “I 

have seen sin on thee.” I do not take up the question as to 

particular trials being the result of particular sins in individuals. In 

many cases we know that this is the case. In others it is more 

doubtful. And hence, though it is well in affliction to ask what 

special sin or sins God is pointing at, it is wrong in us to fix 

exclusively upon one or two instead of turning our attention to the 

whole body of sin and directing our efforts against that.

But chastisement supposes also a determination on the part of God 

to get rid of sin. It is the expression of His hatred of it, and of His 

settled purpose to deliver from it. To purify us is what He seeks; 

and this He is resolved to accomplish at whatever cost. It must be 

done, for He cannot look upon iniquity. And what is pain if it expel 

sin? What is sorrow, if it help to purge away the evil of our 

nature—a lifetime of accumulated dross?

There are several figures which God employs for pointing out His 

designs in chastising us. Let us enumerate these:

1. It is a refining. The saints are “chosen in the furnace of 

affliction,”(Isa 48:10) and “when he hath tried me, I shall come 

forth as gold” (Job 23:10). The heat of the furnace burns out the 

dross and leaves the pure metal behind. It is in the furnace that the 

flesh is destroyed and the old man gets his deathstroke. It is in the 

furnace that self-confidence is uptorn, unbelief is broken, and faith 

is strengthened and purified. Were it not for the furnace, what 

would become of our dross and alloy? And then when the silver is 

in the crucible, the Refiner himself comes near. Hear how the Lord 

hath spoken concerning this: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, 

I will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter 

of my people?” (Jer 9:7) “I will turn my hand upon thee, and 

purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin (Isa 1:25) 

“When the Lord . . . shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from 

the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of 

burning” (Isa 4:4).

2. It is a sifting. “Lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of 

Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve” (Amos 

9:9). We are God’s corn, grown in His fields and gathered in by 

His hand. Yet we are coarse and rough grain. Many a sifting 

process we must pass through in order to separate the coarser 

particles that nothing but the finest may remain. Affliction sifts us. 

Persecution sifts us. God has many a sieve, some finer and some 

coarser, and He makes us to pass through them according as we 

require. He sifts the professing church, and many fall off. He 

applies a finer sieve, and many more fall off. He takes each church 

by itself, each congregation by itself, and sifts them, and many 

false brethren are discovered. He takes each believer and sifts him 

individually and his coarser particles pass off. This process is 

repeated. He is winnowed and sifted again and again till the grain 

is purified.

3. It is a pruning. “Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, 

that it may bring forth more fruit” (John15:2). We are the branches 

of the vine. Christ is the Father’s vine: the stem and root of all 

spiritual life. Over this precious vine the Father watches. His desire 

is that “the branch of the Lord should be beautiful and glorious,” 

that this vine should yield its fruit in its season. Hence, He not only 

waters it, but keeps it night and day. And He prunes it with the 

skill and care of a husbandman. He wishes to make each branch 

fruitful as well as comely, and He spares no pains, for “herein is he 

glorified if we bear much fruit.” How much we owe to this 

heavenly pruning! What rank, luxuriant branches does it cut away! 

What earthliness, what foolishness, what waywardness, what 

hastiness, what fleshly lusts, what selfish narrowness are all, one 

by one, skillfully pruned away by the vine-dresser’s careful knife!

4. It is a polishing. We are “living stones,” placed one by one, 

upon the great foundation stone laid in Zion for the heavenly 

temple. These stones must first be quarried out of the mass. This 

the Holy Spirit does at conversion.

Then, when cut out, the hewing and squaring begin. And God uses 

affliction as His hammer and chisel for accomplishing this. Many a 

stroke is needed; and after being thus hewn into shape, the 

polishing goes on. All roughness must be smoothed away. The 

stone must be turned around and around on every side that no part 

of it may be left unpolished.

The temple indeed is above, and we are below. But this is God’s 

design. As the stones of Solomon’s temple were all to be prepared 

at a distance and then brought to Jerusalem, there to be builded 

together, so the living stones of the heavenly temple are all made 

ready here to be fitted in without the noise of an axe or hammer 

into the glorious building not made with hands. Everyone then 

must be polished here; and while there are many ways of doing 

this, the most effectual is suffering. And this is God’s design in 

chastisement. This is what the Holy Spirit effects: as like a 

workman He stands over each stone, touching and retouching it, 

turning it on every side, marking its blemishes and roughness, and 

then applying His tools to effect the desired shape and polish. 

Some parts of the stone are so rugged and hard that nothing save 

heavy and repeated strokes and touches will smooth them down. 

They resist every milder treatment. And yet, in patient love, this 

heavenly Workman carries on the Father’s purpose concerning us. 

Keeping beside Him, if one may thus speak after the manner of 

men, the perfect Model according to which the stone is to be 

fashioned—even Jesus, the Father’s chosen One—He labors till 

every part is shaped according to His likeness, line after line. No 

pains are spared, no watchfulness relaxed, till we are made entirely 

like Him, being changed into the same image from glory to glory 

by the Spirit of the Lord.

Thus affliction molds and purifies. Thus it effaces the resemblance 

of the first Adam and traces in us each lineament of the second that 

“as we have borne the image of the earthly, we may also bear the 

image of the heavenly.” “Oh,” said a saint of other days, “what I 

owe to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus!”

Come, then, let us question ourselves and endeavor to ascertain 

what affliction has been doing for us and what progress we are 

making in putting off the old man and in putting on the new. Am I 

loving my worldliness of spirit and becoming heavenly minded? 

Am I getting rid of my pride, my passion, my stubbornness, and 

becoming humble, mild, and