erything
His will is to be our one desire. Happy the soul to whom affliction is
not a series of single acts of conflict and submission to single acts of
His will, but an entrance into the school where we prove and approve all
the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.

It has sometimes appeared, even to God's children, as if affliction were
not a blessing: it so rouses the evil nature, and calls forth all the
opposition of the heart against God's will, that it has brought the loss
of the peace and the piety that once appeared to reign. Even in such
cases it is working out God's purpose. 'That He might humble thee, to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,' is still His object in
leading into the wilderness. To an extent we are not aware of, our
religion is often selfish and superficial: when we accept the teaching
of chastisement in discovering the self-will and love of the world which
still prevails, we have learnt one of its first and most needful
lessons.

This lesson has special difficulty when the trial does not come direct
from God, but through men or circumstances. In looking at second
causes, and in seeking for their removal, in the feeling of indignation
or of grief, we often entirely forget to see God's will in everything
His Providence allows. As long as we do so, the chastisement is
fruitless; and perhaps only hardens the more. If, in our study of the
pathway of Holiness, there has been awakened in us the desire to accept
and adore, and stand complete in, _all the will_ of God, let us in the
very first place seek to recognise that will in everything that comes on
us. The sin of him who vexes us is not God's will. But it is God's will
that we should be in that position of difficulty to be tried and tested.
Let our first thought be: this position of difficulty is my Father's
will for me: I accept that will as my place now where He sees it fit to
try me. Such acceptance of the trial is the way to turn it into
blessing. It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the will of
God all the day.

_Chastisement leads to the fellowship of God's Son._ The will of God out
of Christ is a law we cannot fulfil. The will of God in Christ is a life
that fills us. He came in the name of our fallen humanity, and accepted
all God's will as it rested on us, both in the demands of the law, and
in the consequences which sin had brought upon man. He gave Himself
entirely to God's will, whatever it cost Him. And