is gifts, then the removal of them will make us love him
more than ever.

"Though now He frowns, I'll praise the Almighty's name,
And bless the source whence past enjoyments came."

We often hear it said, that every thing which happens to us is for our
good, even in this world.--Many things happen to men, even to
Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though
all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love
God. Some things, then, even here, are intended to be life-long sorrows
and trials. Their object is reproof and constant admonition. We need
another state of existence to explain the present. If that future state
does not prove that earthly discipline has had its designed effect, the
sorrows of this life show that God can bear to see us suffer, even when
he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer. For while men
suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often fail to
make them better. God foresees all this. Hence God is able to look upon
suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted.

If, now, his design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they
reached ours) is utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will
arise, whether the God who can bear to see us suffer for our good,
which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be effected, will not be able
to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our resistance to his
designs. One who has endured much mental suffering cannot have failed to
see, that God's parental relation to us is not analogous to that of
parent and child among men. It terminates in the relations of governor
and of judge; being, indeed, from the first, included in those
relations. This is not so in our earthly relationship. God sees men
suffer as no earthly parent could; he inflicts pain as no earthly parent
should. All is for our profit; but if that object fails through our
perverseness, we are instructed, by our experience, that if God can look
on mental anguish and not relieve it, because he seeks an ulterior good,
the punishment of sin, the natural and just consequences of disobedience
to the great laws of the universe, may be, in their extended impression,
another ulterior good, which will warrant the same mental sufferings
after death, and forever.

Could I be permitted, therefore, I would take by the hand every bereaved
father whom so great an affliction as the death of a child has no