A Letter To John Grace – October 1st, 1860
My dear friend, John Grace,
Trials, sufferings, afflictions, vexations, and disappointments are our appointed lot; and though grievous to the flesh, yet when they are sanctified to the soul’s good, are made to be some of our choicest blessings. But when we are in the furnace, we rarely see what benefit it is producing, or what profit is likely to arise to ourselves or to others out of it. Our coward flesh shrinks from the cross, and until submission and resignation are wrought in us by a divine power, and the peaceable fruits of the Spirit begin to show themselves, we cannot bless the Lord for the trial and affliction. It is true that our trials vary as much as our outward circumstances or inward feelings, and each perhaps thinks his own trial the heaviest. But no doubt infinite wisdom appoints to each vessel of mercy, those peculiar trials in nature or degree which are required to work out God’s hidden purposes. “What I do”, said the Lord to Peter, “you know not now, but you shall know hereafter”; and thus time and larger measures of light and grace may show us the reason, as well as the needs-be, of many afflictive circumstances which, when we were passing through them, were to us an insoluble enigma. No, as out of the bosom of the darkest cloud the most vivid flash of lightning usually shines forth, so out of our darkest hours the brightest light sometimes gleams forth.
Those especially who stand up in the Lord’s name, if they are to preach with any profit to the tried and exercised family of God, must themselves be well acquainted with the path of tribulation; for how else can they go before the people, or cast up the King’s highway, or take up the stumbling stones? Levity, carelessness, and indifference, with a general hardness and deadness in the things of God, soon creep over the mind, unless it be well weighted with trials and afflictions; and when this spirit prevails in a man’s mind, it will manifest itself in his ministry, to the deadening of all life and power in the preaching of the Word. In this way we become surrounded with a host of men whose judgments are informed in the letter of truth, but who know little or nothing of its life and power. Not that trials and afflictions have in themselves any power to produce spiritual life and feeling, as they rather work rebellion and death; but the gracious Lord condescends to work in and by them, and to communicate of His grace to the soul that lies at His feet, burdened and exercised.
What a mercy it is to have any divine life in the soul, any grace, or any marks of grace; to be made to see and feel the emptiness of the world, the sinfulness of sin, the evils of the heart, and above all, to see and feel the preciousness of Christ in His bleeding, dying love! There is a reality in the kingdom of God as set up in the heart; and there is a suitability and a preciousness in the Lord Jesus Christ which may be felt, but can never be adequately described. The Lord knows how to support the soul in trials and afflictions; how to draw forth faith, hope, and love upon His most gracious and glorious self, and to give us eventual victory over every foe.
I am, yours affectionately,
J. C. P.
Jesus is LORD! 
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