Affliction, a School of Experience By Charles Spurgeon

Why should I dread to descend the shaft of affliction, if it leads me to a gold mine of spiritual experience? Why should I cry out if the sun of my prosperity goes down, if in the darkness of my adversity I shall be the better able to count the starry promises with which my faithful God has been pleased to gem the sky?

Go, thou sun, for in thy absence we shall see ten thousand suns; and when thy blinding light is gone, we shall see worlds in the dark which were hidden from us by thy light.

Many a promise is written in sympathetic ink, which you cannot read till the fire of trouble brings out the characters. "It is good for me that I have been afflicted that I might learn thy statutes."

Affliction, a help to Piety By Charles Spurgeon

I have seen a little plant beneath an oak tree sheltered from the storn, and wind, and rain, and it felt pleased and happy to be so screened; but I have seen the woodman come with his axe and fell the oak, and the little plant has trembled with fear because its protection was removed.

"Alas! For me," it said, "the hot sun will scorch me, the driving rain will drown me, and the fierce wind will tear me up by the roots."

But instead of those dreadful results, the shelter being removed, the plant has breathed freer air, drank more of the dews of heaven, received more of the light of the sun, and it has sprung up and borne flowers which else had never bloomed, and seeds that never else had sown themselves in the soil.

Be glad when God thus visits thee, and when he takes away these overshadowing but dwarfing comforts, to make thee have a clear way between thee and heaven, so that heavenly gifts might come more plentifully to thee.