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NO
?AIN
AMONG
THE
BLESSED.
{DISC.
IX,
is
one
way to victory.
I
was
dumb,
says
David,
"
and
opened not
my
mouth, because thou didst
it;'.'
Ps.
xxxix. 9.
Our
love to
God,
our
resignation to
his
will,
our
holy
fortitude
and our patience
find a
proper
trial
in such
smarting
seasons.
Perhaps
when some severe
pain
first seizes
and surprizes
us, we find
ourselves like
a
wild bull in
a net,"
and
all the powers
of nature
are
thrown into tumult and disquietude,
so
that
we
have no
possession
of our
own
spirits; but
when the
hand of
God
has continued
us
a
while
under
this divine discipline,
we
learn
to bow down
to
his
sovereignty,
we
lie
at
his
foot
-
stóol
calm
and
composed
:
He
brings
our
haughty and
reluctant
spirits
down to his foot,
and makes
us
lie
hum-
ble in the dust,
and
we
wait-with
patience
the
hour of
his
release.
Rom.
v. 3,
4.
"
Tribulation
worketh patience,
and patience under tribulation
gives
us
experience"
of
the
dealings
of
God
with
his
people and makes
our
way to
a
confirmed hope
in
his love.
The
evidence
of
our
various
graces
grows
brighter and stronger under
a
smarting rod,
till
we
are
settled
in
a
joyful
confidence, and the soul
rests
in
God
himself.
Sometimes
he
has
permitted evil
angels to
put
the
flesh
to pain,
for
the trial
of
his
children
;
so
Job
was
smitten
with
sore boils from head
to foot
by
the
malice
of
Satan,
at
the permission
of
God
;
but
"
he knows the
way
that
I
take,
says
this holy man,
and
when he has
tried
me
I
shall come forth
as
gold.;
for
my
foot bath
held
his
steps,
`through
á.11
these!trials,
neither
have
I
gone back from
the commandment
of
his
lips
;"
Job
xxiii,
10
-12.
At other
times
"
he suffers wicked men to
spend their
own
malice,
and
to inflict
dreadful
pains
on
his own
children
:"
Look
back
to
the years
of ancient
persecu-
tion
in
the land
of
Israel,
under
Jewish
or
heathen
ty-
rants
;
review the
annals
of Great
Britain ; look over the
seas
into
popish kingdoms
;
take a
view
of
the cursed
courts
of
inquisition
in Spain,
Portugal,
and Italy;" be-
hold
the
weapons, the
scourges,
the
racks,
the
machines
of torture
and
engines
of
cruelty,
-devised by
the
barba-
rous and inhuman
wit
of
men, to
constrain
the saints to
renounce their
faith, and
dishonour
their
Savióur.
See
the
slow fires
where the
martyrs
have been
roasted
to
death
with
lingering
torment:
These are
seasons
of
ter-
rible trial indeed, whereby the
malice
of
Satan and
anti
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