Your ShelfYour Projects

Man on Trial

9%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 11, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 2.

Read the full edition

Man on Trial

By Wm. Covert

WM. COVERT
EVERY one who enters the kingdom of God will surely have to pass through a stage of trial. Peter was referring to the necessary trial of men when he said that those under test “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, . . . though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” It is the trial that strengthens character, and the standing firm that gives evidence of righteousness. The trial of faith is the Christian’s training allowed of the Lord to develop strength of character. And these trials, though undesired, are more precious than gold can be; for they build the eternal riches into the very man himself, and these precious riches will never dim while the ages of glory move on.
God permits trials to come to us for our good, but we may permit these trials to work out our destruction by failing to stand firm for the right when they come. On this point Paul says, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.” 1 Cor. 10: 13.
God allows his children to pass through the school of adversity so that he may develop strength in them at points where their character is weak, and his leadings are often over roads that are rough, that they may grow strong by overcoming the obstacles which they have to meet on the way. It was the matter of training under trial that Moses had in mind when he wrote of how God led and cared for Israel. He says that in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness “he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him.” Deut. 32: 10-12.
Moses here compares the stirring up that God gave Israel in taking them out of Egypt, to what the mother eagle does for her young ones when teaching them to fly. She stirs up the nest where the fledglings are resting, and compels them to try their wings on the air. If the eaglet fails to get his poise and to bear himself onward, the mother swoops beneath and bears the fluttering charge on her own wings, repeating the lesson until the young bird is taught how to use his wings.
As the eagle must learn by trial how to cleave the air and fly over mountains and plains, so must the child of God learn how to bear himself over the way which God has marked out for him to go. Temptations beset and trials surround; but these may be used as the athlete uses weights and dumb-bells in his training to win a prize.
The redeemed who enter the kingdom will go there “through much tribulation.” Acts 14: 22. They will be like the oaks that grow on the open where summer’s winds and winter’s blasts have caused them to fasten deep into the earth so that they could resist the elements which have howled around them. Contrast the holding power of one old giant oak on the mountaintop with the resisting strength of one that has stood an equal number of years in the forest, surrounded by a thousand of its own kind. Remove the thousand and leave the one to withstand the heavy storm alone. Every woodsman knows what the result will be; the first wild wind will blow it down. It had not been tried by the storms that blew as was the other that resisted the elements by sending its tap-root down, and its laterals out to brace against the powers of the air that raged around it.
The person who does not stand with his anchor made fast by faith in the Mighty Rock, will fall when the storms of temptation come as certainly as the forest-grown tree falls when the trees around it are taken away. It is unwise to complain of trials which are allowed of God, for these are lesson books which must be mastered in that course which prepares us for heaven. These fiery trials are necessary to consume the refuse which would mar the beauty of holiness if it were allowed to remain.
“Every man’s work shall be made manifest: . . . because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” 1 Cor. 3: 13. Suppose trials do come; we are admonished not to think it strange concerning the fiery trials which are to try us; for they are to be the lot of all who stand the test and wear the victor’s crown. “Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried.” Dan. 12: 10. God chooses them as he beholds their constancy in the furnace of affliction.
Chicago, Ill.