SORROW IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOUL'S

EDUCATION.

HOW much does this connection of sorrow with education explain and unravel! what light does it shed on many of the otherwise obscure dealings of God! Man-renewed man, I mean-is a learner here, a scholar, a disciple; he must be educated-made meet for his inheritance, ere he can take his place amongst his elder brethren above. In order to this end, he is placed under governors and tutors until the time appointed of the Father; he has to learn his lessons, to be submitted to training, and subjected to discipline, which often seems severe. What a stern instructor does trial often prove! How sharp the rod with which our Father not unfrequently corrects his poor wayward and rebellious child; but it is for "our profit," and not His pleasure, that He chastises, and that we might be "partakers of His holiness." The dust-cleaving

propensities of our nature have to be overcome, and our hearts taught to lift their eyes from earth; by how many bitter experiences have these lessons to be inculcated by the sundering of how many ties, and the blighting of how many gourds, are they often learned! And when even these first principles are attained, how many an after lesson has to be acquired! we have to learn our own weakness. What teaches this like trial? Our own ignorance and corruption. Here again, how self-revealing does the furnace prove! We fancy we know much of God and much of our own hearts; that we have made large attainments in selfdiscipline, and the crucifixion of our will -but when trial comes, perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps from the quarter whence we calculated on happiness,when God smites our comforts, blasts our expectations, withers our hopes, or dries up our refreshing streams of earthly enjoyment, lays His hand on

our precious things, or recalls some cherished boon, what discoveries are made to us of the rebellion of our will, and the alienation of our nature! How prone are we then to arraign the wisdom or the love of Him whom, in the day of prosperity, we could hail as our all-wise, all-gracious God! Whilst ungrateful repinings and murmurings, or faithless questionings and disputings, too plainly prove that we are "yet carnal," and have need that one teach us, when we had concluded ourselves advanced pupils in the school of Christ. It is not until the Lord takes the book into His own hand, and puts us upon proof, that our deficiencies are made palpable to us, and we become aware of our short-comings. And yet how important, how salutary the consciousness of ignorance; that first step to the acquirement of true wisdom; that essential to the possession of the humility with which the Christian ought ever to be clothed.

Again, where are faith and patience to be exercised and matured ?--Where but in the furnace? Without exercise no Christian grace can ever be strengthened or confirmed,-without trial, where is the exercise? It is as easy to learn by rote in the school of Christ as in any other; how many such scholars do we meet !— how much of such superficial knowledge do we all possess !-But it is not thus our great Teacher would instruct His disciples, it is to a "reasonable service" He calls, to an experimental acquaintance with Himself He invites; and if the saint of God can testify, "Thou hast known my soul in adversity," surely it has been the blessed confession of thousands, that it was "in adversity" they first knew their God, or through its means they learned most of the length and breadth of His incomprehensible love and allabounding sufficiency. Not that we would magnify affliction into a Saviour, or presume to give it the Holy Spirit's

place in the conversion of the sinner, or the sanctification of the believer, far be it from us thus to rob the only Sanctifier of the honour due unto His name. He is the author of all spiritual life, the finisher of the faith He imparts. He it is who takes of the things of Christ, and shews them to the eyes He has opened and anointed with the unction which is His; from Him "all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed," and to Him for ever be the praise of the perfecting of the saints, and their establishment in every good word and work. But whilst we utterly disclaim the sacrilegious intention of assigning to the instrument any part of the honour due to Him whose grace can alone make it effectual to good, the history of the Church of God in every age, inspired and uninspired, bears ample testimony to the fact that God has been pleased to use affliction as the means of bringing many a sinner, like the prodigal, to his right mind; whilst to the saints

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