LEARNING THROUGH SUFFERING

^[p. 156] LEARNING THROUGH SUFFERING

How varied and peculiar are the shadows of death to which we are subjected, and each one is intended to be the occasion of our learning some new and deeper lesson of what He who is the life, is to us. As we are placed in the one, so do we learn the other in contrast. Life and the loveliness of Christ are learned while the contrast here serves as a foil for them.

The life and manner of Christ are manifested to me by the Spirit of God according to the nature of the death darkness in which I am here. Paul was a prisoner, John was an exile, when the manifestations and revelations of Christ were vouchsafed to them, and to each one in keeping with the living tomb in which they were immured. The suffering is like the black-board in a school-room, in which the characters of some new proportion are written in white. The suffering is only to close the natural side, the natural eye, in order that there may be divine vision, and that the single eye may see clearly and fully some new or hitherto unknown beauty in Christ. You must shut the eye of nature in order that there may be a single eye to see and to take in any new lesson of Him, the perfect One.

We may feel the dreariness of the tomb or the chill of the dreary time of sickness and sorrow, but when we can like Jacob rest through it all - make a pillow of the cold stone - it is then that the Lord causes a light to shine in the darkness, and we rejoice more, and our gladness is more than when corn and wine and oil increased.