" And, ' if the Lord were pleased to kill us,' would such have been the effect of His chastisements? and such the manifestations of His grace, and the visits of His love? No; 'it is good for us that we have been afflicted.' However mysterious our afflictions may appear to others, they are all plain to us. 'We know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted us.' We needed these chastisements.

And the evidence is clear that they were not sent in judgment, but in mercy; that they came not from an enemy, but from a friend; and that they came fraught with distinguished blessings. The Lord is not doing us evil, but doing us good. He is, we trust, fitting us for more eminent services in His kingdom. He is preparing us to sympathize with Christ, to breathe more of His sweetness, love, and tenderness in our conversation, and more of His faith and fervor in our prayers, and thus to learn how to preach His blessed Gospel to the poor, and to bind up the broken-hearted.

" In this way, also, may it not be that the Lord is making us a sign to the people? They have never before seen men walking about as calmly in the furnace of affliction as the three children in the furnace of fire. This is the first time they have ever seen men ' glory in tribulation also — being not merely patient but joyful, not merely submissive and resigned, but exceedingly filled with comfort. And thus i death worketh in us, but life in them.' Their sympathies are in many instances awakened; their admiration is called forth, and they learn what all the preaching in the world could not make them see, viz., the power of the Gospel. They see that God is with us of a truth; that we have not followed cunningly devised fables, but that the truth we have proclaimed to them is God's everlasting truth, — truth which He honors, and which is not only sufficient to live by, but abundantly sufficient to die by.

Captain of our salvation

" And what if it should ' please Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons and daughters unto glory, to make ' us, as he did the Captain of our salvation, perfect through sufferings '! Shall we complain of this, and say with the disappointed prophet, 'I do well to be angry '? When we were contemplating a missionary life in America, did we never pray that God, in building up His kingdom and gathering His outcasts, would make just such use of us as He pleased, — would make us any thing or nothing, as might be most for His glory?

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