The Thorn in the Flesh, or 2
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D. But the apostle speaks of his peculiar temptations as being also "a messenger of Satan,"as if Satan had sent an emissary from hell to represent himself, and to do, so to speak, his work. As we send a messenger as a kind of 'second self', to do what we wish to have done, to speak what we wish to have said, to execute what we wish to be executed; so Satan sent an emissary from the bottomless pit to do his foul work, to speak his base language, to carry his vile errands, and accomplish his infernal schemes against Paul. It is literally "an angel of Satan," an infernal spirit commissioned by his master, the devil, to haunt and waylay the apostle, and thus be "a serpent by the way, an adder in the path." (Gen.49:17.) As one of Satan's infernal entourage, this foul fiend was no doubt a faithful messenger, and much refreshed the soul of his master (Prov. 25:13) by executing his errand to the very letter; for from Paul's language this Satanic messenger appears to have had no more compassion on him than Lucifer himself, for he says that he buffeted him.
There is something so peculiar and yet so expressive in that word, that I feel I must explain it somewhat minutely. Corinth being a place celebrated for the public games, which took place there every fourth year, the apostle often borrows the figure of these contests to illustrate the various conflicts of Christian experience. One of these games was a public boxingmatch between two trained fighters. If, then, we just cast a glance at those celebrated games to which all Greece resorted, and bear in mind how in those days those trained boxers used to fight, it may cast a light upon the expression "buffet." In our days it is bad and brutal enough for men to fight with their fists; but in ancient times, at least at these public games, it was not considered a sufficient trial of courage and endurance to fight merely with naked fists. The combatants used to bind round their fists what was called a leather glove made of thick bull's hide, and well loaded with strips of lead and iron. An ancient poet, Virgil, gives a description of one of these contests, and if I remember right a most horrible scene it must have been, for one of the combatants was nearly killed, and would have been so had the fight not have been stopped, for as it was, his face was almost beaten in.
Thus, when we read of the messenger of Satan buffeting our apostle, we may represent to ourselves this agent of the devil striking him as with a glove loaded with strips of lead and iron, and by his repeated blows beating his face to a pulp; stunning and confusing his mind, and crushing up the very features of God's work on his soul; so that like a vanquished boxer in the ancient games, who after such a contest was often scarcely recognizable as a human being, our apostle was so stunned and beaten, and his experience so mauled and knocked about by this messenger of Satan, that it seemed scarcely capable of being recognized by himself as the work of grace upon his heart.
It is true that the messenger of Satan no more really defaced the workmanship of God in his soul than he could plant a thorn in his new man of grace; but reality is one thing, and experience another. Thus, though Satan cannot really touch the work of grace upon the heart, yet he can so buffet the feelings, so harass the mind, so stun and stupefy the judgment, that all spiritual experience becomes in our apprehension a shapeless mass, in which the distinct features of the image of God are well near lost.
Have you not, when thus buffeted and stunned by the assaults of Satan, jumped back at times with horror at yourself? (I know I have,) and said, "Can I be a Christian? Is there any mark of grace in my soul? Can ever God dwell here? Could I have such thoughts, temptations, and feelings if my body were indeed the temple of the Holy Spirit?" Now you who know something of those exercises– and what living soul knows not something of them?– have a counterpart in your own bosom to Paul's thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him.
II. But let us now approach our second point, and see what HELP and RELIEF were afforded to our apostle under those distressing conflicts. He tells us that "he pleaded with the Lord three times that it," or rather that "he," that is, the messenger of Satan, "might depart from him;" or, as the word literally means, stand off or away from him. As we should beg the owner of a dog to call him off from worrying a sheep, so Paul begged of the Lord to call off the messenger of Satan from worrying his soul. But did the Lord hear and answer that prayer? No! not in its literal import. He would not, therefore, take it away; it came by his permission; it was intended for Paul's spiritual good. He would not, therefore, he could not consistently with his own wise purposes, remove the temptation; and therefore, instead of taking it away, he dropped that sweet promise into his soul which I have now to unfold– "My grace is sufficient for you."
It is as if the Lord had said by it, "Paul, the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, are temptations very painful to bear, but they are sent for your benefit. You have been highly blessed, greatly favored, by what you have seen and heard in the third heaven– so much 'sail' will be too much for you, if you have not proportionate 'ballast'. You must have this thorn to humble your pride; this messenger of Satan to buffet you, lest you be exalted above measure. All, therefore, that I can do for you is to give you my grace, that you may bear it patiently, and I promise you that it shall not be given in vain, for my grace is sufficient for you."
1. What are we to understand by the word "grace" here? We may understand two things– first, grace as signifying the favorof Jesus; for the word "grace" in scripture means literally "favor". In that sense, it is as though the Lord said, "Nothing shall alter my love to you. If you are tempted to rebel, to disbelieve, to give way to injurious suspicions and base suggestions; if Satan buffets you and fills your mind with every vile thought, these upheavings of your wretched heart under temptation do not alter my love toward you, nor stop the current of my eternal and unchangeable favor. This favor of mine, as being in myself, independent of all creature circumstances, is sufficient for you." The Lord knew that Paul hated himself for his vile and rebellious feelings; that he grieved and groaned under, and was exceedingly distressed by them; he would not, therefore, impute it to him as sin when he hated the very thoughts that sprang up in his carnal mind against his better will.
Let me seek to illustrate this point by a figure. A father may have two sons– one of them may be a reckless, careless, disobedient youth, full of health and strength, but who is ever grieving him by his misconduct. The other may be a poor cripple from his very birth, or afflicted with a pining sickness. Now surely, though the father of both, he will not treat these two sons in a similar way. He loves them both, because they are his sons; but the reckless, disobedient youth who grieves his heart will not experience at his hands the same kind treatment as his poor afflicted brother. Neither serves his father; the one from lack of will, the other from lack of power. If age allows, he chastises the rebellious one. But does he chastise the poor cripple, the paralytic, the gasping, coughing boy lying upon a bed of consumption? Does he love him the less for these bodily sufferings which disable him from active employment? Surely he will not take away his love from his sick child because his afflictions render him incapable of working for him. Will he not rather feel as if they were his own? How we see this in the case of the father who brought his son to Jesus to be healed of a mute spirit! "If you can do anything have compassion on us and help us." (Mark 9:22.) How he identifies himself with his afflicted son– "help us."
Is not this true also as regards the Lord and his suffering people? "In all their afflictions he was afflicted." (Isaiah. 63:9.) When, then, from heaven his dwelling-place the gracious Lord looks down upon a child of his, and sees him mangled and torn by a thorn in the flesh, so that he cannot walk as he would, because of a thorn in his foot, nor grasp a promise as he would from a thorn in his hand, nor see as he would from a thorn in his eye, nor pray as he would from a thorn in his knee; is his grace the less? "Is his mercy clean gone forever? Does he forget to be gracious? does he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" (Psalms. 77:8, 9.)
Or when he sees, according to his own permission, the messenger of Satan falling upon a child of God, and buffeting him by his powerful blows, does he look down upon his afflicted saint with anger because he reels and staggers under the assaults of his enemy? If you, a parent, saw your child in the street and some stronger boy beating him, would you love him less for his torn clothes and bleeding face? So with the Lord when he sees his poor suffering children groaning and sighing under the thorn in their flesh, or bleeding in soul from Satan's powerful strokes, he does not take away his love and mercy from them because under these trials and temptations they cannot serve him as they would. In this sense, therefore, the Lord said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you."
2. But look at the word "grace" in another sense, which indeed seems to be the meaning intended here– the manifested communication of this favor through the Spirit.When our blessed Lord rose from the dead and ascended on high, he received gifts for the rebellious. "It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell." (Col. 1:19), "and out of this fullness we receive grace for grace." (John 1:16.) This grace, then, out of his own fullness he freely bestows upon the suffering members of his mystical body here below; for he has in himself an ocean fullness to supply their every need, which made Paul say, "My God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:19.)
When, then, the Lord said to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you," it is as if he would thereby assure him of divine support under the trial; that the temptation should not prove to be his destruction, as he would have strength given him to endure it. This exactly agrees with what we read elsewhere, "God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it." (1 Cor. 10:13.) This grace the Lord puts forth in communicating secret supplies of strength, as David found when he said, "In the day when I cried unto you, you answered me, and strengthened me with strength in my soul." (Psalm 138:3.) As, then, the grace of the Lord in the season of trial and temptation is found to be sufficient, it gives the soul a firm standing-place, a holy rest, an object, even the Lord himself, for faith to look unto, an all-sustaining prop for weakness to lean upon; and as the grace of the Lord is thus given under trial and temptation it is found to be sufficient– but not more than sufficient.
3. Let us look, then, at this word "sufficient."It is not superfluous, but sufficient– enough but nothing to spare. In the natural world, there is enough, but not more than enough. Expenditure, but not waste; abundance, but not oversupply, is the grand law of creation stamped upon the inhabitants of sea, earth, and sky. The same law holds good in the new creation. No child of God will ever have too much grace. He will have enough to supply his need; enough to save and sanctify him; enough to fit him for his place in the mystical body of Christ; enough to support him under his afflictions; enough to make him live honorably and die happily, but not more than enough. This was typically shown in the gathering of the manna in the wilderness, when "he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack." (Exod. 16:18.) "As your days so shall your strength be;" but not more than your day or less than your need.
Have you not found this the rule of God's procedure hitherto? Take a review of the numerous trials through which you have passed since his fear was first planted in your heart. Has he not been faithful to every promise of strength and support? Has his grace ever proved insufficient in the hour of need? Can you remember any trial, temptation, or affliction in which when you really felt your need of 'help from the sanctuary', and it was withheld?
"By the grace of God," said the apostle, "I am what I am;" no less, no more. Can you not say the same? Why are you now where and what you are? Who held you up in the trying hour? Who preserved you when your feet were almost gone, when your steps had well near slipped? What but his grace? When the enemy came in like a flood, who by his Spirit lifted up a standard against him? Have you not thus far proved that his grace is sufficient? and so you will keep proving it to the end. But how are we to prove this? for we must realize it that we may truly know it. By ever looking unto the Lord, leaning upon him, and seeking supplies of this grace out of his fullness.
How was it with Paul? The thorn made him pray; the messenger of Satan made him cry and groan. They were made 'instruments' of bringing him to the footstool, there to wrestle with the Lord, and beg of him that those enemies of his soul's peace might depart from him. The Lord, it is true, did not answer those prayers just us Paul wished; they were not, however, rejected, but answered in a different shape. "I cannot take it away," said the Lord; "but I will give you strength to bear it. It is given you for your good– it is better for you that this thorn should still remain in your flesh, but my grace shall be sufficient for you. If tempted to rebel, you shall not be a rebel; if tempted to infidelity, you shall not be an infidel; if tempted to blasphemy, you shall not be a blasphemer; if tempted to doubt and fear, you shall not be given up wholly to unbelief."
But, though much honey still remains in this honey-cup, let us not linger here, but, like the bee, seek to gather another store out of the second portion of the Lord's declaration to his suffering apostle–"For my strength is made perfect in weakness."
III. Christ's strength is only made perfect in our weakness.
1. The blessed Lord is the only strength of his people. This made David say, "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." (Psalm. 18:2.) It is a humbling lesson to learn, but blessed when learned, that all the strength we have to fight and gain the victory is wholly from the Lord. We have no strength to believe, to hope, or to love, to seek him or to serve him, to live holy, or to die happily, but as he is graciously pleased to work in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. This lesson every child of God has to learn in his own experience. And how does he, for the most part, learn it? In no way so effectually as by a thorn in the flesh; for this mars all creature strength by hampering every movement, and thus teaches us inwardly and experimentally our weakness– the only real way of learning it.
How weak is a man to walk, if he has a thorn in his foot! How weak to grasp, if he has a thorn in his hand! And if this thorn is continually there, and if the flesh in consequence rankles and festers, how in time it will drain all his strength away, and turn an open wound into a running sore! Thus the Lord cannot take a more effectual way to teach us our weakness than by allowing Satan to plant a thorn in our flesh. How can we think, for instance, that faith is in our own power, if tempted every day with infidel thoughts? or that a good hope through grace is at our command, if tempted to despair? or that love is a fruit of our own exertions, when enmity and rebellion are working in our carnal mind under the influence of the thorn in the flesh? Or how can we dream of any one good thing dwelling in our flesh, when a festering wound is ever manifesting the corruption of our fallen nature? Can the Lord more effectually show us our weakness than by allowing Satan to plant a thorn in our flesh, that through this ever-running sore all our strength may drain away? If ever you learned weakness, it was in the hour of temptation; if ever your strength was drained away, it was under the assaults of Satan. Thus, the Lord, so to speak, outshoots Satan with his own bow; defeats the tempter with his own arts; and as he makes the wrath of man to praise him, so the very assaults of hell he turns to his own glory.
You may mourn and sigh under your daily thorn; but, it is indispensably necessary for every Christian to learn his weakness. It is a lesson most painful, yet most profitable; for nothing is so deceptive as to think we are strong when we are weak. Such 'imagined strength' resembles the convulsive struggles of an epileptic, or of a raging lunatic in an asylum. It takes the united strength of four men to hold him; but it is the mere working of frenzy that gives strength to his muscles. Take away his disease, and the man is as weak as a child. There is no greater fallacy than to think ourselves strong when we have no strength at all. It is but the delirium of brain fever, the fitful strength of insanity.
But how can we learn our weakness? How can we teach a madman in an asylum, that he has no strength when he can grapple with four or five guardians and they are unable to keep him in bed? Get the disease out of him, and then he will learn his weakness. So was it with the man who had his dwelling among the tombs. Chains and fetters could not bind him. But when the devil was cast out he came and sat all weakness at Jesus' feet, clothed and in his right mind. Cruelly had Satan buffeted him, but he was thereby brought to Jesus.
So our daily thorn is our daily teacher, and the lesson it teaches is, "O, soul; how weak you are! How unable to do anything except the Lord is pleased to do it in you and for you!"
2. But how suitable to our experience of our helplessness are the Lord's words, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." As, then, we learn our weakness, we begin to learn our strength. "When I am weak, then am I strong." We begin to look outside of our miserable selves, and look up to the Lord that strength may come from him into our soul. Thus Jeremiah found it, "I called upon your name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon; you have heard my voice; you drew near in the day that I called on you; you said fear not." (Lam. 3:55, 57.) Thus, the Lord, by the application of his word, by a sweet whisper of his love, or by the dropping in of a gracious promise, can in a moment communicate strength.
Have you not found it so? In a season of temptation and trial, when it seemed as if you had scarcely a grain of grace in your soul, yet, if the Lord began but to appear in the opening up of some promise, or the application of some word, or the shining in of the light of his countenance, what strength was communicated to believe! Now as faith begins to hold up its head, hope follows in its train, and love brings up the rear. What a strength that is which the Lord gives! How supernatural, how peculiar, how outshining all other! But if we were strong in ourselves, we could not distinguish the Lord's strength from our own. If faith were at my command, how could I tell when I believed for myself and when the Lord was pleased to give me to believe, as well as to suffer for his sake? If I could pray or preach, or you could hear, as and when we pleased, how could we tell the difference between what the Lord does in and for us by his Spirit and grace, and what we do ourselves?
But by learning experimentally our own weakness when the Lord is pleased to make his strength known, the contrast is so great that we can see it shining as with a ray of light from heaven, and then we know what it is to have his strength made perfect in our weakness.
Sometimes you cannot PRAY. You may see it desirable to pray, but not a breath of prayer moves upon your soul. You are like a sailor becalmed at sea– he longs to go on, and whistles for the wind, but the breeze does not come and the ship cannot move. There he is it may be for days or weeks without power to move upon the sluggish ocean; but at last, the wind begins to blow, he spreads the sail to the breeze, and now the ship bounds over the rolling waters. Does not that man know the difference between not being able to sail without the wind and sailing with it, when the wind comes? Men may call us lazy Antinomians for not always moving on. But is the sailor a lazy sailor because he cannot sail without a wind? Does not his very impatience under the calm disprove the charge of laziness? So it is with us– we are sometimes at a halt, without a single breath of the Spirit moving upon the heart. Then, we can no more really pray, though we may use words, than the sailor can move without the wind, though he spreads the sail. But if the Lord is pleased to send a gale of his grace, then we can spread the sail to the wind, and ride with smooth fleetness over the sea.
So it is with the other graces of the Spirit. To BELIEVE to some persons seems easy enough, and indeed would be so were natural faith the only thing required to salvation; but natural faith being worthless in the things of God, and spiritual faith being a heavenly gift, we are experimentally convinced that we cannot produce it. We thus learn our weakness. But when the Lord is pleased to whisper a sweet promise, or drop in a gracious word, or break in upon your soul with some life and light, you can then believe without the least difficulty. Here, again, is strength made perfect in weakness.
So also as regards ANY GRACIOUS FRUIT, or the performance of any acts that are to God's praise, we have to learn by painful experience our thorough inability to do them as God would have them done.
Nor are WORDS less dependent upon his grace than actions, for you cannot speak a word in his name with unction or savor, except he opens your mouth that you may show forth his praise.
Nor can you feel any flowing forth of LOVE and affection towards his saints, if it be not breathed into your heart by a power from above.
These lessons of our own weakness and helplessness we are daily learning, and as we are taught them we find also that as without Jesus we can do nothing, so with him we can do all things. Thus it becomes a part of our daily experience to be weak and yet be strong; to have nothing and yet possess all things; to be down in the mud and yet up in the sky; bankrupts in self, yet rich in the Lord; beggars at the door, yet fed by his alms. These are the lessons we learn or should be learning every day, and this is the sum and substance of all, "My strength is made perfect in weakness."
You are often troubled and exercised because you are so weak. Would you have it otherwise, if in order to be 'strong in the Lord' you must be 'weak in yourself'? But you say that you would not mind feeling yourself so weak if you always had the Lord's strength made perfect in your weakness; but to be all weakness and yet to find that the Lord does not come in to strengthen– this is such a trial. No doubt it is, for in this mainly lies the trial of faith. But if the Lord always strengthened you the moment you felt weak, you then would not properly learn the lesson of your weakness.
Spiritual poverty in this point resembles natural poverty. If a man in good circumstances were reduced by some sudden and unexpected failure to abject poverty; but was only poor for a day or a week; if his friends came round him with a large donation and replaced him in his original position, he would not have learned his poverty by so short an experience of it. But let him be poor for a year or two, and be every day getting deeper and deeper into debt, with no prospect of recovering his position, he would learn the misery of poverty in the most effectual way, even if he were replaced in his former circumstances.
So in grace– if we were to feel weak only for an hour or a day, we would not learn our weakness; but if month after month and year after year we have to groan under increasing helplessness, and only occasionally and perhaps at distant seasons get a supply out of the Lord's fullness, by this experience we learn our weakness, as a man sunk into poverty learns the 'experience of poverty' by an increasing load of debt.
IV. But is there no further fruit to be gathered from this tree? Yes! The apostle tells us, as we proposed to consider in our last place, what the EFFECT was of the Lord's words upon his heart– a holy acquiescence in the Lord's dealings, and, even beyond this, a glorying in his very infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon him. I have thought sometimes, that one of the greatest marks of grace in the soul, and one of the highest points to which a saint can rise in this life, is the experience which the apostle here describes as the fruit of Christ's strength being made perfect in his weakness.
But, mark this, Paul does not glory in his sins. There is a race of men that glory in their iniquities, as if the more a man could sin in defiance of all laws, human and divine, the more manly were his actions. The apostle did not glory in his sins, but in his infirmities.
The two things are widely different. What, then, are infirmities as distinguished from sins? Why, the weakness of which I have been speaking is an infirmity and yet not a sin; at least, not in the same way or to the same extent as actual transgression. If I cannot raise up in my soul any lively actings of faith in the Lord; if I cannot cast forth the anchor of hope, so as to enter manifestly within the veil; if I cannot love the Lord and his people as I would, these are my infirmities. Thus, when David feared that God's "mercy was clean gone forever," he adds, "and I said this was my infirmity." (Psalm. 77:10.) This infirmity of soul resembles that "spirit of infirmity" in body with which Satan had bound the poor woman in the gospel for eighteen years, so that "she could in no way lift up herself." These are "the infirmities" which the Spirit helps in prayer (Rom. 8:26), and with the feeling of which our gracious High Priest is touched. These infirmities have indeed in them the nature of sin, as being the sad inheritance of the fall; but they are not willful transgressions. Weakness is not wickedness; Jacob halting on his thigh is not Esau despising his birthright.
Nor did the apostle glory in his infirmities, as infirmities, but he gloried in them because the power of Christ rested upon him, and so endued him with strength to overcome them. He could not glory in a thorn in the flesh as a thorn, or in the pain caused thereby, or in the messenger of Satan as a messenger of Satan, or in the cruel blows which he gave him; he could not glory even in his weakness as manifested in his helplessness to remove the thorn, or to drive away the messenger. But he could and did glory in his infirmities, as made a means of drawing strength out of Christ into his soul; for so precious was this strength, as experimentally realized, that he could glory in those very infirmities as a means whereby it was communicated.
Whatever makes the Lord experimentally known is precious, come through what channel it may. Now, as we realize in this way our weakness, and find the Lord making his strength perfect in it, we gladly and heartily put the crown of glory upon his head.
But, besides this, a felt experience of our infirmities brings us into what I may perhaps call a continual contact with the Lord of life and glory; for our weakness, as inwardly felt, is ever bringing us to the throne of grace as needy suppliants that we may receive daily supplies. It is our weakness and the Lord's strength, our need and his supply, our trials and his support under them, that keep up communion with the Lord.
If day by day I could pray, or preach, or write, or perform spiritual acts in my own strength without the Lord working by his power in my soul, what would I need the Lord for? I could do without him; he would be nothing to me. But if I cannot preach, or pray, or write, or believe, or hope, or love, or bring forth any gracious fruit, except as the Lord is pleased to communicate of his grace to my heart, a sense of this brings my soul more or less day by day, into contact with him that I may get supplies of strength and power out of him. If I can live independent of him, I would do so. We all dearly love independence– it is the very blood that circulates in all our veins. It used to be my motto in days of old, for I was too proud to be dependent upon anybody for anything.
But grace teaches us what we never would learn from nature. Grace has taught me to be dependent, to be nothing, to be full of infirmities; and as I feel these things, it leads me to the Lord that he would make his strength perfect in my weakness, that he would teach me in my ignorance, reveal his atoning blood and dying love to me in my guilt and shame, that privately and publicly, with my pen and with my tongue, in the pulpit and in my house, before the church and in the world, I may find his power resting upon me.
Now as these things work in our souls, they bring us into living contact with a living Lord, open up a way of communication between his strength and our weakness, his mercy and our misery, his power and our helplessness. I can tell you how you live day by day, though I may neither see you nor speak to you. If you have no thorn in the flesh; if you have no messenger of Satan to buffet you; if you have no trials or temptations; then you will have no communications of the Lord's love and mercy, grace and strength to your soul. You may read your Bible, and fall upon you knees with all regularity, but there is no communication out of the fullness of Christ to your heart.
But if, on the other hand, you are tried and tempted, distressed and exercised, have a daily thorn, and a messenger of Satan, and by these means your creature strength is drained away, you need for the Lord to come into your soul to give you his grace to strengthen and support you. Thus, these very infirmities and temptations are most blessedly over-ruled for your good and the Lord's glory, by opening up a door of communication between a full Christ and an empty sinner; a gracious and loving Jesus, and a poor, dependent wretch who has nothing and is nothing in himself but sin and misery.
Bless God, then, for your trials; they are the best things that could happen to you. Your very providential trials are so many weights tied round your neck, clogs fastened round your feet to keep you from running in the way of sin. The very temptations you experience are means of emptying and stripping you of Pharisaic pride. The thorn in the flesh and the messenger of Satan are means in God's hands of weakening your own strength, and convincing you that without Christ you can do nothing. They are indeed painful to bear; they are meant to be so; they would not have the right effect unless they were painful.
God does not play with us and will not allow us to play with him. We sometimes need powerful and painful dealings to bring us to our senses, and shake us out of that dream of false security in which thousands are wrapped up, and to show us sin and self in their true light. When we are tried and exercised by the thorn and by the messenger, how worldly thingsfade out of sight! What an empty scene this vain world, with all its pleasures and occupations, is then seen to be! How all here below seems blighted and withered– a valley of tears, a waste, howling wilderness!
And as heaven opens with its glory and blessedness, its eternal rest and peace, what a solid reality is found and felt in the grace of Christ, the consolations of the gospel, and the love of God! But would the power and reality of these heavenly blessings be experienced unless there had been first a thorn to weaken us, drain away all our 'creature strength'– that enemy of the cross of Christ? Would Jesus be known in his blood, love, and grace, if there were neither trial nor temptation, infirmity or suffering to make us feel our deep and daily need of him? Thus the apostle could say, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me"– as the pillar and the cloud rested upon the tabernacle; as the divine glory rested upon the mercy seat.
It will be our mercy if we can use his language from any measure of his experience; for as he could glory in his infirmities, that the power of Christ might rest upon him; so shall we just in proportion as we are taught by the same divine Teacher, and have the same faith wrought in our heart by the same power of God.
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