PATIENT IN TRIBULATION

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 5, 1860

PATIENT IN TRIBULATION.

THE saints of old went through great tribulation; and our Lord has given us to understand that while in the world we shall have the same; yet how few have heartily considered and embraced this position of divine truth, as it relates of necessity to them personally!

If we look at it at all, we seem to do so under the impression that we are to be exempted from this part of God's will concerning his people.

But let us consider. How can we follow him who was made perfect through suffering, if we do not suffer with him? How can we be made alive to God without becoming dead to the world? And how can we become dead to the world unless we are crucified to it? And how can one be crucified without suffering from the cross, and tribulations by which it is to be accomplished? Nay:—

“Through tribulations deep, The way to glory is.”

not only of the glory that is beyond this sphere, but that inner glory of the new man formed within, who is in the likeness and image of God. Before this can be done our old man must be crucified, with his affections and lusts! And this crucifixion through successive tribulations, will result in the complete death of the carnal mind if we do but endure the fiery ordeal through which our great Refiner may require us to pass.

Endure! But alas how many fall here! It would seem as though we were willing enough to go with Christ to the temple, to astonish and confound, by our skill and wisdom, the great and the wise; or to the place where the leaves and the fishes are multiplied; or to Jerusalem to receive the honors and praises of the inconsiderate throng; or to the mount of transfiguration, where, filled with ecstasy, we shall be constrained to exclaim, “It is good to be here!” And all these may have their time and place in God's order; yet there is but little, or naught in any of them that is either crossing or trying.

And surely this is not following Christ fully. It is only stepping occasionally into his path whenever and wherever it may suit the tastes and preferences of a refined self-will; in effect it is not following him at all. To follow him is to “go through evil as well as good report.” At one time to confound the wise in their wisdom, and at another time to answer not a word though one who may have our life in his hand demands it; at one time to abound in plenty, and at another time to be an hungered, and to suffer need; at one time to have the praises of the multitude, and at another to hear it cry as loudly, “Away with such a fellow from the face of the earth, it is not fit that he should live;” at one time to be on the mount amid its raptures, with the spirits of the just, into whose company we have come; and at another to be alone, enveloped in darkness, in sorrow, and in great heaviness of spirit, where none may participate or sympathize with us.

Ah, yes! To know Christ in the “fellowship of his sufferings,” is as necessary, in order to “be perfected in him,” as to know him in his triumphs. “For unto you it is given not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.” And “we are joint heirs with Christ if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.” “Forasmuch then, as Christ hath suffered for us in his flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin.”

But how few understand this! How long before many can be brought to see its divine origin and necessity! Hence, but few can be found who have not some complaints and discontent, which they often express concerning the things which are a source of trial and suffering to them, as though the way was hard, and many things they find in it ought not to be so.

O how many stumble and become offended here in the path of Christ! Instead of embracing the crosses and tribulations, both inward and outward which come upon them in the providence of God, as the appointed and necessary means of their crucifixion and death to the world, they shrink “as though some strange thing had happened unto them;” and take it as an evidence that God is displeased and angry with them. Hence, they have no heart to endure. They do not see its necessity—nor do they believe that God has any wise and kind design in it. This is why they fail to grow in grace and in spirituality.

To have the necessary strength and willingness to endure, we need faith; faith in God as the Lord of all,—feeding the young ravens when they cry; permitting not the young lions to suffer hunger; clothing the grass, adorning the lilies, numbering the hairs of our head, and so particular in all his providence that not a sparrow falls without him. Yes, faith in him, as one who sitteth like a refiner and purifier of silver, watching the progress of the work, and keeping us in his crucible only till the refining process is completed; or as the wise husbandman of the vineyard, whose eye is constantly upon each branch, perceiving every dry twig, oozing excrescence, or worm-secreting knurl that is to be found upon it; and with his sharp pruning knife, yet merciful and skilful hand, “purging it that it may bring forth more fruit.” Yes, a full and hearty confidence in him as the Lord from whose hand we receive good, and,—what may seem to the unwise or unbelieving,—evil; who so completely controls our afflictions, that they really work for us a

far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. All things are ours; whether it be Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, things present, or things to come, all are ours.

Need we say more? Is it not clear that in order to follow Christ, self must be refused in all its will and wisdom, and the cross accepted with all its pains of crucifixion and death?—that if we are ever purged from our dross, we must pass through the fire?—if ever counted happy we must endure? In a word, if our garments are ever found without spot, they must be cleansed by him whose “coming is like the refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap,” penetrating every thread and fibre of the thoughts, desires, and intents of the heart; melting and subduing its unpliableness, and cleansing from all its stains and pollution?

Thy way is then plain. It is simply to embrace all the trials and crosses that come upon you, whether inward or outward, as from the hand of your heavenly Father. Be like Job, who, when stripped of children, possessions, health, reputation and all else save his life, looked beyond the satanic instrumentality through which it was all accomplished, and seeing him, the Invisible, who had permitted and guarded it all, he endured, and blessed the Lord who had both given and taken away. Let your attention never be taken up with the agency through which your trials come. If you do all will seem perplexing and wrong. But as Mr. Wesley says, “See God in all things and be resigned, that you may be conformed to the whole will of God, who wills and does all (sin excepted), which comes to pass in the world. In order to this, we have only to embrace all events, good and bad, as his will;” not regarding the instrument, but him who governs all. As the poet has it:—

“The man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heavens espy.”

Happy is he who has learned this judicious lesson! His eye is single; not double or manifold which brings “care of many things,”—his whole body is “full of light;” affording peace and “contentment with such things as he has,” and he knows, as Mr. Wesley further says, “that the best helps to a growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us.” We should receive them with thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this account,—that our will has no part in them. The readiest way which God takes to draw a man to himself, is to afflict him in that he loves most, and to cause this affliction to arise from some good action, done with a single eye because nothing can more clearly disclose to him the emptiness of what is most lovely and desirable in the world.

Yet, under all this there may be a peace and quiet of soul like the stillness that prevails far beneath the turbulent waters of the ocean. Yea, a rejoicing in these tribulations from the assurance that this is the way of salvation, the way through the crucifixion and death of Christ, to the resurrection in his likeness, which is life triumphant and immortal. The way from the earthly to the heavenly, from the flesh to the spirit, and from self to God. Paul had to learn this and so must we. To him was given a messenger from Satan to buffet him; a thorn in the flesh to pierce his pride lest he should be exalted above measure with the revelations of God. He did not at first see its necessity, and besought the Lord, even thrice for its removal. But God answered not by removing the trial, but by promising him grace sufficient to sustain him in it. Hence, after this he could say, “I now rejoice in my sufferings.” And “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and not only so, but glory in tribulations also;” knowing what they accomplish under God. So fully did he see that “all things work together for good,” that we find him “glorying in his very infirmities.”

The inquiry may arise,—When do these sufferings cease, as to their painfulness? In the language of Mr. Wesley, we reply, “When we become willing they should endure as long as God pleases.” That is, when what is now our cross, that which now thwarts our wills becomes a pleasure. When we “rejoice evermore and in every thing give thanks.”

If we do but endure the cross of Christ, the time will soon come when we shall be crucified unto the world, and the world unto us; when we shall become “dead and live not” in our old selfhood, but Christ live in us, and the life that we shall then live will be by the “faith of the Son of God.” Then all things become alike good; all things alike welcome to the spirit of resignation and thankfulness. The mountains are made low, and the valleys are raised up till all becomes one shining highway, where no evil heart, temper or passion is found; and the Lord our God “is all in all.”

We may further remark, that these tribulations, or in other words, the cross of Christ is wisely presented to all. But oh, how few understand or accept it! The open sinner fights against us as his bitterest enemy, and of consequence, realizes a life of inward and outward violence and unrest. He will not “take up the cross,” and is impatient to find it in his way.

Even the young convert in the midst of the joys of the justified state, imagines that he shall be forever free from suffering—and when it comes “if need be, he is in heaviness through manifold temptations” or trials; instead of “counting it all joy” as something which is to give “faith its perfect work,” in order that he may be “perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” he sadly concludes that he has deceived himself, or that he has got out of the way and is under his Father's displeasure. Hundreds stumble and halt under this error for years. They have no strength or heart to endure tribulations, especially those that are inward, because they have no faith that God is in, or has any control over them. The Lord cannot therefore, advance them because they will not abide the fire through which he designs to bring them forth as gold—without dross. You will always find such ready “to leap over a wall, and run through a troop,” while in the joyous, luminous, and ecstatic of the emotional; but when they are called to “endure hardness as good soldiers,” the very means through which the Lord may advance them, they are sad, faithless, and discouraged.

Through all this they fail to become established. Sometimes they are in a state of justification—of pardon and joyous consciousness of acceptance with God—but at others they are full of unbelief and anxiety if not painful remorse. Their faith depends mostly upon their feelings and emotions, and not as it should, on the unchangeable promise of the Lord. They lack the faith that would keep them immovable.

A few of these unsettled and anxious ones at length find the way of peace and become established therein. This they find by simply reconstituting themselves and their all to God; and relying on the plain promise, that they are in consequence “accepted of him.” They now cease to look at the state of their emotions, for evidence of acceptance. They find that it is all in the will. When this is in harmony with God's, he accepts and approves. When it is in opposition to his, even in the smallest matter, he is displeased. Resting upon this plain and scriptural test, they find great peace, and are enabled to abide in the fellowship of the Spirit from moment to moment as they never did before. And though tribulations come upon them, and their feelings and emotions vary as did those of their masters, yet they cling to the precious comforting truth, that “where there is a willing mind it is accepted.”

With this faith and knowledge of the way, they can now endure hardness and suffering. They now consent that God shall “do unto them as seemeth unto him good.” To put them into the crucible and into the furnace; on mount Tabor, or on the cross; amid the plenty of leaves and fishes, or in the wilderness to suffer with hunger and temptation; for they have been assured that all work together for good, while it is in their heart to say, “thy will be done.” Their language now is “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him,” being confident that their Father owns them even “in the furnace of affliction.”

God now advances them. They are put into the first fires which cause the grosser dross to arise and pass off, until as they see no more coming to light, they conclude that all is pure within.

They are then subjected to new tests—put into fires hotter than the first, when, to their astonishment perhaps, more of the selfish nature is brought to view. This passes also. They are not becoming worse as it may seem to them, but purer and purer. Only let them abide, and as they are passed from vessel to vessel, and from fire to fire “dying daily” they shall be brought forth “as gold seven times tried in the fire.” Yea after they have suffered awhile, they shall become “strong established and perfect.” Thus saith the Lord.—Sel.