Purposes of Discipline.
By T. L. Cuyler
God's loving discipline has several purposes; and one of them is correction. Who knows our faults as well as our all-wise Father? It is a reasonable supposition that before the infinite mind of God there rises a complete and beautiful ideal of what his earthly child might be, and what he will yet be in the perfected estate of Heaven. He so deals with us as to bring us nearer to that divine ideal. Before the mind of my friend Palmer there arose a certain conception of "Faith kneeling before the Cross;" and he aimed to realize that conception in marble. With patient toil he applies the chisel to every false line that his artist-eye detects in the statue; no touch too trivial, if it cuts away the slightest blemish. So our heavenly Father employs the chisel of correction; and many of us know to our sorrow that he cuts deeply, and sometimes cuts to the quick. He is a weak and worthless parent indeed, who imitates poor Eli, and never corrects the vices of his son. Can we suppose that our loving Father will ever commit so wanton a wrong as to spare his chastising rod, and thus spoil his earthly child for all the highest purposes of being? The bare thought is an insult. If we had more of the spirit of Job, and knew what was for our good, we would rather say: Father, stay not thy hand, cut where thou wilt; smite as thou wilt; prune away what thou wilt; perfect thine image in us, and make us meet for the inheritance of glory! "Happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty." It is a blessed thought that, when our heavenly Father applies the knife, he hath the skill to cut the diseased spot; when he prunes he knows just what limb to lop off. It looks like a ruthless process to put a plow through a velvet greensward; but the farmer foresees the springing blades, and that within a few months the torn soil will laugh with a golden harvest. Why should you and I cry out in angry remonstrance when God puts the colter through the subsoil of our selfishness? Afterward this torn soul may yield the plentiful fruits of the spirit. Deep plowing makes holy harvests. Ah! brethren, there are bitter mercies as well as sweet mercies; but they are all mercies, whether given to us in wine or given in wormwood. A second purpose of God's discipline is prevention. His absolute foreknowledge beholds every possible contingency, and foresees not only what you and I will be, but also what we might do under other circumstances. It is against this preventive discipline of love that our ignorance often rebels most violently. Because we cannot see just what God is saving us from, we vent our foolish reproaches; if we could see this we would often kneel down and thank God for certain trials as the richest of his mercies. That commercial calamity which swept away the fortune was sent because God foresaw that prosperity would work spiritual bankruptcy. When he lowered another child into a vale of humiliation it was to preserve his child from the dizziness which pride was bringing on; and when he laid another Christian's idol in the tomb it was God's last inevitable protest against a worship that was perilous to both the living and the departed. From the "evil to come" God spares the living as often as the dead. When we reach Heaven we will wonder at and adore the chastening hand that often warded us away from many an unsuspected pitfall and many an unseen precipice. We need hardly to remind our readers how often our heavenly Father employs his discipline for the development of character, and for the perfecting of graces. A boy reared up in luxury and indolence becomes mere pulp. God often lays heavy burdens upon us, which he could easily spare us as far as his power is concerned; but these loads are needed to give us spiritual sinew. He makes the back equal to the burden. God might keep us, if he would, out of many a heated furnace of affliction. But he is a refiner, and hot furnaces often make bright Christians. They tell us that, when a silversmith is engaged in purifying his metal he keeps a close eye on the molten silver. He is sure that the process is perfected when he can see his own face in the heated metal as in a mirror. So when our heavenly Purifier can see his own image in the chastened soul he is satisfied. The trial has wrought its blessed purpose; the affliction which was not joyous but grievous is working out its exceeding weight of glory. God disciplines us often for the good of others. Parents are subjected to a certain regime for the benefit of their children. More than one pastor has been tried in the fire for the profit of his flock. "Six weeks of painful, dangerous sickness did more for me than six months in a theological seminary," said a sagacious minister. That model minister in Rome wrote to his son Timothy: "Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus."—T. L. Cuyler, in N. Y. Independent.