Affliction

Affliction.

The very afflictions of our earthly pilgrimage are presages of our future glory, as shadows indicate the sun. J. P. F. Bichter.

It is a great thing when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips, and when we pray that it may pass away, to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us. E. H. Chapin.

As threshing separates the wheat from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue. R. Burton.

If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once to what it teaches. James Burgh.

The cloud which appeared to the prophet Ezekiel carried with it winds and storms, but it was environed with a golden circle to teach us that the storms of affliction which happen to God's children are encompassed with brightness and smiling felicity. N. Caussin.

Tears, and sorrows, and losses are a part of what must be experienced in this present state of life; some for our manifest good, and all, therefore, it is trusted, for our good concealed—for our final and greatest good.

Leigh Hunt.

With every anguish of our earthly part the spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant when Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. j. R. Lowell.

There will be no Christian but will have a Geth- semane; but every praying Christian will find that there is no Gethsemane without its angel.

Rev. T. Birney.

Afflictions are the medicine of the mind. If they are not toothsome, let it suffice that they are wholesome. It is not required in physic that it should please, but heal. Bishop Henshaw.

God often lays the sum of his amazing providence in very dismal afflictions; as the limner first puts on the dusky colors, on which he intends to draw the portraiture of some illustrious beauty. 8. CAarnoclk.

The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of affliction. E. H. CMpin.

Affliction is the good man's shining scene; prosperity conceals his brightest rays; as night to stars, woe luster gives to man. Young.

There is no gloom on earth; for God above

Chastens in love,
Transmuting sorrow into golden joy,


Free from alloy.

His dearest attribute is to bless,
And man's most welcome hymn is grateful
Cheerfulness.


Horace Smith.

A sable night returns a shining morrow,
And days of joy ensue sad nights of sorrow;
The way to bliss lies not on beds of down,
And he that had no cross deserves no crown.


F. Quarks.

The good are better made by ill,
As odors crushed are sweeter still.


Samuel Rogert.

But all God's angels come to us disguised;
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death,
One after other lift their frowning masks,
And we behold the seraph's face beneath,
All radiant with the glory and the calm
Of having looked upon the front of God.


J. B. Lowell.

Let us be patient! these severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions


Assume this dark disguise.
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors ;


Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,


May be heaven's distant lamps.

Longfellow.

God in Israel sows the seeds

Of affliction, pain, and toil;
These spring up and choke the weeds


Which would else o'erspread the soil.
Trials make the promise sweet,


Trials give new life to prayer,
Trials bring me to his feet,


Lay me low and keep me there.

W. Cowper.