L. D. SANTEE by L. D. Santee

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 2, 1870

L. D. SANTEE

By L. D. Santee

Suffering.

“Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he will heal us. He hath smitten, and he will bind us up.” Hos. 6:1. Afflictions have the effect of drawing us nearer to God, or of exciting in us a spirit of perverseness and rebellion. When pain, sorrow, or temptation, comes, the unarmed soul with its carnal mind is overborne, vanquished, and cast down into deeper wretchedness, instead of rising triumphantly through them to new heights of love and purity. When the sinner having no arm to lean upon but the arm of flesh, is cruelly torn by the keen darts of sorrow, until every nerve is quivering with anguish, and he walks with uncertain steps, groping blindly, where, oh! where, shall he turn for comfort? Should he walk abroad in the hope that nature would pour consolation into his troubled breast, he sees, alas! that the curse is devouring the earth. All nature, both animate and inanimate, is groaning for redemption, being burdened with sin until hills and valleys are worn and disfigured with the trail of the serpent. The destroying elements are at work, and he turns his sad eyes away, realizing that the fashion of this world passeth away. That the material universe is subject to change and decay, and that nature is even now in the sere and yellow leaf. Should he turn to his fellow-man, he finds that suffering is the common lot of all. A smiling outside may hide a sad and weary heart, even as the graceful ivy hides the crumbling column; and he sees the aptness of the psalmist’s words, “He [man] cometh as a flower and is cut down. He fleeth as a shadow and continueth not.” When darkness shadows his life, when the yawning tomb is burying from his sight the beloved, when hope is well nigh gone, and he longs to sink down into nothingness, and be numbered with the things that were, then comes the language of our text, like an angel of mercy to lift the despairing one into life and light: “Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.” Oh! bitter, desperate, despairing heart! come to Him who alone is able to calm thy troubled beating. Come to the crucified One, and let his blood wash from thee the stains of sin. Let Him who has suffered for thee, guide thy tempest-tossed soul out of the turbid waters of strife, and into the haven of rest and peace.

The language of our text is addressed to those who have strayed far from the Lord, and who are afflicted by him in order to cause them to return. He takes away their supports, that he may save them as they are sinking. In mercy his hand is stretched to hide the false beacon, that their eyes may be attracted by the true. When a man is called to endure affliction, and is sanctified thereby, he becomes a disciple of suffering, the only teacher that can develop faith, and bring out men’s deeper and better nature. We do not mean merely a breath of vexation, such as moves the spirit, as a puff of wind that ruffles the wave, but real suffering that melts the heart, and consumes the alloy by its fiery breath. No one has suffered enough until he is patient in suffering. “Made perfect through suffering,” are the wonderful words we read concerning the Captain of our salvation; and we must walk in his steps. If we have tribulation until the dross is consumed, and we come forth sanctified, purified, and chastened, then is the will of God in us accomplished. Says the psalmist, “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” When we can look up and say, Not my will, O God, but thine, be done; then is the Spirit of Christ transfused into us, and in his word we may find consolation for which we search in vain through all nature. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Heb. 12:11. Sorrow is a gardener that causeth flowers to spring in waste places. If we are sanctified by the afflictions that fall to our lot, when we have suffered until the dross is consumed and we reflect the image of the Refiner, then he who spoke peace to the troubled waters will dispel the clouds whose dark shadows have hung over us, and we shall find in the infinite love of God a balm for our sorrows. Then it will be our desire that God may be all in all. The language of our hearts will be,

“Let me dwell with the King in his beauty, And I ask, oh! I ask for no more.”