The Reason for Chastisement

““Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” — Heb. xii. 6.

What I God loveth me when He is discharging His quiver upon me! — emptying me from vessel to vessel! — causing the sun of my earthly joys to set in clouds? Yes I 0 afflicted, tossed with tempest — He chastens thee BECAUSE He loves thee I This trial comes from His own tender, loving had — His own tender, unchanging heart I

Art thou laid on a sicJc-hed — are sorrowful months and wearisome nights appointed unto thee? Let this be the pillow on which thine aching head reclines — It is because he loves me!

Is it hereavement that has swept thy heart and desolated thy dwelling? He appointed that chamber of death — He opened that tomb

—because he loves iliee! As it is the sufFering child of the family which claims a mother’s deepest affections and most tender solicitude, so hast thou at this moment embarked on thy side the tenderest love and solicitude of a chastening Heavenly Father. He loved thee into this sorrow, and He will love thee through it. There is nothing capricious in His dealings. Love is the reason of all He does.. There is no drop of wrath in that cup thou art called upon to drink. “I do believe,”’ says Lady Powerscourt, ‘’He has purchased these afflictions for us as well as every thing else. Blessed be His name, it is a part of His covenant to visit us with the rod.” What says our adorable Lord himself? The words were spoken, not when He was on earth, a sojourner in a sorrowing world, but when enthroned amid the glories of heaven” As ma7iy as I love, / rebuhe and chasten (Revlii. 19).

Believer! rejoice in the thought that the rod, the chastening rod, is in the hands of the living, loving Saviour, who died for thee 1

Trihulatio.i is the Kings Highway, and jet that highway is paved with love. As some flowers before shedding their fragrance require to be pressed, so does thy God see meet to hruise thee. As some birds are said to sing their sweetest notes when the thorn pierces “their bosom, so does He appoint affliction to lacerate, that thou mayest be driven to the wing, singing, in thy upward soaring, My heart is fixed 0 Ood my heart is fixed P^ “Those,” says the heavenly Leighton, “He means to make the most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon.” “Our troubles,” ;says another, “seem in His Word to be ever in His mind. Perhaps half the commands and half the promises He gives us there, are given us as troubled men.”

Be it ours to say, “Lord, I will love Thee, not only despite of Thy rod, but hecauce of Thy rod.” I will rush into the very arms that are chastising me I When Thy voice calls, as to Abraham of old, to prepare for bitter trial, be it mine to respond with bounding heart, ^^Eere am IT — and to read in the

Bow whicTi spans my darkest cloud, “He chdS” tens BECAUSE He loves /”