Chastising is an effect of love. It is not only consequential to, but springs from it; wherefore there is nothing properly penal in the chastisement of believers. Punishment proceeds from love to justice, not from love to the person punished; but chastisement is from love to the person chastised, though mixed with displeasure against sin.
What disturbs us in this world is not "trouble," but our opposition to trouble. The true source of all that frets and irritates and wears away our lives, is not in external things, but in the resistance of our wills to the will of God expressed by external things.
Whether it be a poison from one serpent sting, or whether it be poison from a million of buzzing, tiny musquitoes; if there be a smart, go to Him, and He will help you bear it. He will do more, He will bear it with you; for if so be that we suffer with Him, He suffers with us.
Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim, the very roughness only stimulates the climber to steadier and steadier stops, till that legend of the rough places fulfills itself at last, "per asfera ad astra" over steep ways to the stars.
The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded spring encircle all.
When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
