My meditation of him shall be sweet when I consider his chastenings, for "blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord."

Of all the beatitudes this may appear to be the strangest. To the young disciple chastisements may seem anything but happiness; you see in them no beauty that you should desire them. If you have never been taught in the school of affliction, you cannot understand this; neither can you understand it if you have not learned well what you were there taught. Perhaps you have been greatly afflicted, and yet you can see no good fruits of it in your soul. Every disappointment has only increased bitter feelings in your heart. You are conscious of this. You are ready to say, "Where are the blessed effects of sorrow?" The Master comes "seeking fruit," and findeth none. Why is this? We reply, that sorrow in itself has no sanctifying power. Many are hardened by it, and rendered more unlovely and unholy. But the plane in the hand of the carpenter's Son cannot fail to make you better, and if you are not profited by it, it is because you do not rightly receive your sorrows.

While you were a stranger to the love of Christ you had no special consolation to sustain you in the time of trial. The consolations of God, which are neither few nor small, you had no right to appropriate. With every stroke of the rod you seemed to hear a terrible voice saying, "I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins." But now that you are reconciled to God, all is changed; you hear another voice saying, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten."

Henceforth, therefore, you may accept trials as love-tokens, for "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

Perhaps, like Jonah, you have been sitting with great delight under the shadow of your gourd. To give you joy and comfort in the desert, God caused it to spring up. You felt glad and even thankful because of its pleasant shade, and while you rested under its shadow songs of praise ascended to the Giver. Yet "God prepared a worm." You woke one morning to find your beautiful gourd all withered. Never did the desert seem more dreary. You fainted under God's smiting, and with aching and rebellious heart you prayed for death. There seemed to be nothing for which to live, and you said, "It is better for me to die than to live."

"Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?" There are times when God shows his mercy to us by turning a deaf ear to our foolish prayer. No, I should not say he turneth a deaf ear to our prayer. He does hear, and he does answer, but not according to our asking. You asked death; he sent grace to live. "It is better for me to die," you said. God, by sparing your life, said most plainly, "It is better for you to live." God knows best.

If you are still mourning over your smitten gourd, permit us to give you some reasons why you should no longer mourn, or, at least, why you should not murmur.

Remember, the gourd was undeserved. You had done nothing to merit such a blessing. Perhaps even when it came it found you, like Jonah, indulging in bitter, reproachful thoughts. Wayward and wandering were you; loving and tender was God. Earthly parents bestow most tenderness and anxious thought upon the erring child. The Good Shepherd leaves the ninety and nine to search for the straying one. These things but faintly illustrate the dealings of God with his children.

Perhaps you were in the path of duty, and were not unthankful while you rested under the gourd. Still, you know that you deserve not the least of all God's mercies. Your sufferings are less than your sins deserve. "He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." "Wherefore doth a living man complain?" Let then this thought silence your complaints.

Remember also that the hand that smote the gourd was the hand of your Father, your loving Father. And this thought surely will give you comfort in your sorrow, and will even cause you by and by to sing aloud for joy. Knowing full well that "he doth not afflict willingly," you seek to know why he thus dealt with you. It ought to be enough for you to know that "God prepared a worm." "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter," should make us dumb before him, but so great is his condescension toward them that love him that he even tells them why the smiting was necessary. Your heart was fully set upon the gourd, and you were

"Making a heaven down under the sun."

It may be that there was very little of the pilgrim spirit in your heart. The heart-tendrils were firmly fastened around the gourd; its uprooting seemed to rend you in twain. Bitter and severe was the pain, but the hand that dealt the blow is ready to bind up the bleeding wound, and in after days you will love to look upon this scar, for you will cherish it as a sweet reminder of God's faithfulness and mercy—not only as a monument, but also as a warning, for whenever you look upon it, it will say to you, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

Have you ever noticed the old gravestones in some English burial-garden? The damp climate, which so soon obliterates the letters, has a kindly way of dealing with the horizontal stones. Into the deep grooves of the lettering little seeds are carried by the wind, and, lodging there, the dampness soon causes them to germinate, and in place of the blackness of decay spring up the characters in living green.

Into the deep scars caused by God's sharp instruments the precious seeds of divine consolation shall be wafted. Watered by your tears, they shall soon spring up, and in your sweet submission others will read your testimony to God's faithfulness: "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me."

When God uproots the gourd he gives us something better, and "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

If Paul could call his calamities "light," surely we may; for what are our trials when compared with his? Behold what a crushing load he carried! "In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep, in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." Oh what a life! How could he call all these afflictions light? Placed in the balance with the exceeding weight of glory, they seemed as naught. The afflictions were but for a moment; the glory was eternal.

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate. The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants; and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate."

Then "wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart: wait, I say, on the Lord." And let your meditation be sweet when you consider Him who smites the gourd in order that he may lead you to the shadow of the great Rock.

"When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."