e. Of course the Apostle is speaking here of its ideal operation,
and not of the reality which alas! often is seen when our
tribulations lash us into impatience, or paralyse our efforts.
Tribulation worketh patience, 'and patience _experience_.' That is a
difficult word to put into English. There underlies it the frequent
thought which is familiar in Scripture, of trouble of all kinds as
testing a man, whether as the refiner's fire or the winnower's fan.
It tests a man, and if he bears the trouble with patient persistence,
then he has passed the test and is approved. Patient perseverance
thus works approval, or proof of the man's Christianity, and, still
more, proof of the reality and power of the Christ whom his
Christianity grasps. And so from out of that approval or proof which
comes, through perseverance, from tribulation, there rises, of
course, in that heart that has been tested and has stood, a calm hope
that the future will be as the past, and that, having fought through
six troubles, by God's help the seventh will be vanquished also, till
at last troubles will end, and heaven be won.

Brethren, there is the true point of view from which to look, not
only at tribulations, but at all the trials, for they too bring
trials, that lie in duty and in enjoyment, and in earthly things.
They are meant to work in us a conviction, by our experience of
having been able to meet them aright, of the reality of our grasp of
God, and of the reality and power of the God whom we grasp. If we
took that point of view in regard to all the changes of this
changeful life, we should not so often be bewildered and upset by the
darkest of our sorrows. The shining lancets and cruel cutting
instruments that the surgeon lays out on his table before he begins
the operation are very dreadful. But the way to think of them is that
they are there in order to remove from a man what it does him harm to
keep, and what, if it is not taken away, will kill him. So life, with
its troubles, great and small, is all meant for this, to make us
surer of, and bring us closer to, our God, and to brace and
strengthen us in our own personal character. And if it does that,
then blessed be everything that produces these results, and leads us
thereby to glorying in the troubles by which shines out on us a
brighter hope.

So there are the two sources, you see: the one is the blessedness of
the Christian life, the other the sorrows of the outward life, and
both ma