It is not so much from what trials or sorrows we suffer, but how we suffer—the extent of amount of our sufferings —which determines the purpose of God in them; every suffering be it imaginary or otherwise, it is as I feel it, that God purposes that a corresponding virtue of His grace should grow up in me. The suffering is to bring out a peculiar virtue form His own grace which no other suffering could bring out.
Certain preparations bring out certain desired colors. It is through the tears of the firmament that the colors of the rainbow are obtained. But I mean more than this; the suffering, or the depression, indicates the nature of the contrast, or correlative, which this pressure is appointed to elicit. If the pressure is great and peculiar, then some great and peculiar characteristic of the grace within is thereby to be evoked.
You thresh corn for the grain, but you grind the grain to make flour—the produce is useful according to the severity and peculiarity of the process by which it is made available for use. We dry grapes for raisins—we bruise them for wine! Who does not value the wine more than the raisins? And yet, the same grapes which made raisins, might have made win, if only they had been subjected to a more severe pressure.
We can tell by the very sufferings we pass through, the order of the virtues in the grace conferred on us, for we have nothing which we have not received; but we need especial pressures to reduce to transparency our earthen vessel, which would hid the beauty of the grace given to us from the Lord; therefore “count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptation.” (James 1:22My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; (James 1:2)) “For our light affliction worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” (2 Cor. 4:1717For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; (2 Corinthians 4:17))