PREFACE. would educate in the School of Affliction. May my readers learn more and more, as they are called to endure God's discipline, to trust in His Word, to love His peace, and to glorify His Name. "Departed this Life in Thy Faith and Fear" ** The words printed in italics throughout the Meditations, are those quoted from Holy Scripture. Sickness is the Visitation of God. Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.—JOB v. 6. WHY is this sickness come? Why am I laid aside? How ought I to regard affliction? These questions are natural in season of suffering. Pain and sorrow make us ask in earnest the why and the wherefore of what befalls us. Could it not have been avoided? Was there a needs-be for this trouble? And so the soul, asking these questions, finds the sick-room a place for education. Thoughts and feelings which have satisfied a man are now tried,-put to the proof,-tested. If he pray for the Spirit's aid, he is taught and trained,— learning by experience those truths which it B 2 Sickness is the Visitation of God. most concerns him to know; and as a scholar, he sets himself in earnest to feel the reality of the lessons which are appointed for him. First lesson in the school of tribulation : -The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Affliction is the visitation of God. Nothing in any man's life comes to him by "chance." All things, both small and great, are under the control of God: He foresees, and limits, and disposes. What is sometimes called "good fortune," comes not by accident; neither doth trouble spring out of the ground. Art thou healthy and prosperous? It is the will of God. Am I suffering in body or in mind? It is the Lord: let Him do what seemeth Him good. And this is the only answer that can be given to the weak and sorely tempted ones, whom one trial after another afflicts with increasing sorrows. "So it pleases God!" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? To the believer, Providence is not merely general and universal, but particular and |