TRIBULATION DEEPENS
TRIBULATION DEEPENS
It is often necessary, and profitable too, after seasons of instruction, that we should be subjected to tribulation. The winter is needed to allow the growths of spring and summer to harden through patience or endurance; “for ye have need of patience [or endurance], that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise” (Hebrews 10: 36). Endurance is learned in the winter, to harden the growths which have been acquired in easier times, and we must let patience have its perfect work. You can endure if you have the truth within, for the circumstances which demand endurance only invigorate and call forth the virtues of the truth. Our ability to endure is the measure of our strength in quality as well as extent. One horse will carry a heavier load, but at a slower pace, than another, who will surpass the former by a quicker pace. Both are needed at times; and the ability of each is measured by the different order of endurance. God puts the load on us suited to the ability, or order of ability, which He, through grace, confers on us; and I know the nature of the endurance [p. 70] required of me, from the nature of the burden imposed on me; whether I am to go slow like the waggon-horse under the lumber of life here, the weighty temporalities, like the Merarites; or to go more quickly with a lighter load. As speed increases, power is lost; that is, it is spent in the speed, and not in bearing a greater weight. What would have sustained a greater weight is spent in the speed in which the lesser weight is borne; so that while the fleeter horse carries less than the waggon-horse, the latter does no more than the former; and what is more, neither could do what the other does; and the waggon-horse, of the two, would find it more difficult to do the work of his fleeter brother, than the fleeter one the work of the waggon-horse. The real point for me is to bear well the load appointed for me, and in the pace appointed for me; and as I do, the virtue of the grace in me is brought out, and I am strengthened to bear what I know I have borne. I have learned what is the power of grace in myself. I have endured and the growths acquired in summer, now hardened, come in their turn, to blossom and bud and bring forth fruit.