Such lessons!

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(Thomas Brooks, "The Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod" or, "The Silent Soul with Sovereign Antidotes" 1659)

"Blessed is the man you chasten, O Lord--the man You teach from your law." Psalm 94:12

All the chastening in the world, without divine teaching--will never make a man blessed. That man who finds correction attended with instruction, and lashing with lessoning--is a happy man.

If God, by the affliction which is upon you, shall teach you:
how to loathe sin more, and
how to trample upon the world more, and
how to walk with God more
--then your afflictions are blessed.

If God shall teach you by afflictions:
how to die to sin more, and
how to die to your relations more,
and how to die to your self more
--then your afflictions are blessed.

If God shall teach you by afflictions:
how to live to Christ more,
how to lift up Christ more, and
how to long for Christ more
--then your afflictions are blessed.

If God shall teach you by afflictions:
how to mind heaven more,
how to live in heaven more, and
how to be fit for heaven more
--then your afflictions are blessed.

If God by afflictions shall teach:
your proud heart how to lie more low,
your hard heart how to grow more tender,
your censorious heart how to grow more kind,
your carnal heart how to grow more spiritual,
your froward heart how to grow more quiet
--then your afflictions are blessed.

When God teaches your thoughts as well as your brains, your heart as well as your head, any of these lessons--then your afflictions are blessed.

Where God loves--He afflicts in love. And wherever God afflicts in love, there He will, sooner or later, teach His people such lessons as shall do them good to all eternity!

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