Child of trial! "vessel of mercy!" your God sees meet at times to bring you into the graving-dock, that He may put His tools upon you, and refit and prepare you for the great voyage of immortality. When He opens the sluices of trial, you may see no mercy in His dealings. It may be "deep calling to deep"--the roar and heaving of antagonist waters; they may at first, too, stir up nothing but the dregs and sediment of sin,--expose the muddy pools, the deep corruptions of the heart. But be still! He will yet vindicate the rectitude and wisdom of His own procedure. Ere long, these surging waves will settle peacefully around you, the shadows of heaven reflected in their glassy surface; and better still, strengthened and renovated by that season of trial, you will go forth from the Graver's hands more ready to brave the billows, grapple with the tempest, and reach at last the haven where you would be!
It is _hard discipline_--the undowny pillow, the trench-work and midnight vigils--which makes the better soldier. The type of strength in the kingdom of inanimate nature is not the sickly plant of the hot-house, or the tree or bush choked in the dark jungle; but the pine rocked by Alpine or Norwegian tempests, or the oak mooring its roots in the rifted rock! David would neither have been the King nor the Saint he was, but for the caves of Adullam and Engedi, the rocks of the wild goats, the forest exile of Hermon and Gilead. He had to thank _affliction_ for his best spiritual graces. The redeemed in glory are ready to tell the same. "We would never have been here but for these storms of 'great tribulation.' But for the loss of that child--that worldly calamity--that protracted sickness--that cutting disappointment--that wounding of my heart's affection--that annihilation of earthly pride and ambition--that 'deep calling to deep'--I would not now have been wearing this crown!" Trials have been well compared to the winds God employs to fill our sails and fetch us home to the harbour of everlasting peace![84]
[84] See "Life Thoughts." The author has been more than once indebted, in this volume, to this suggestive little book.
One word of caution ere we close this chapter. From all we have said--of "deeps" and "floods," storms and water-spouts, and midnight darkness--are any to leave these pages with the feeling that Religion is a gloomy, repulsive thing;--that the believer's life is one of darkness and despair;--that better far is the world's gaiety and folly--the merry laugh of its light-hearted votaries--than a life of sadness like this? Mistake us not! We repeat what we have already said. The experience we have been now considering is, in many respects, peculiar; one of those dark passages which stand alone in the diary of the spiritual life. _Religion gloomy!_ Who says so? Shall we take St Paul as our oracle? What is his testimony? In all his letters he tries to crowd as much as he can into little space. In one of these, he has room for only two injunctions. But instead of giving two that are different, he prefers to repeat the _one_. It is the emphatic tautology, "_Rejoice in the Lord alway: and_ AGAIN _I say_, REJOICE."[85] Or shall we seek a different tribunal? Go gather together all the philosophers of antiquity--Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. Bring together the wise men of Greece--the philosophers of Alexandria--the sages of Rome. Ask if their combined and collected wisdom ever solved the doubts of one awakened soul, as have done these leaves of this Holy Book? Which of them ever dried the tear of widowhood as these? Which of them ever smoothed the cheek of the fatherless as these? Which of them ever lighted the torch of hope and peace at the dying bed as these, and flashed upon the departing soul visions of unearthly joy? O pagan darkness! where was _thy_ song in the night? In the region and shadow of death, where did _thy_ light arise?