so He paved for us a
way through suffering, not only through it in the sense of past it and
out of it, but by means and in virtue of it, into the love and glory of
the Father. And it is in the power which Christ gives in fellowship
with Himself that we too can love the way of the Cross, as the best and
most blessed way to the Crown. Scripture says that the will of God is
our sanctification, and also that Christ is our Sanctification. It is
only in Christ that we have the power to love and rejoice in the will of
God. In Him we have the power. He became our Sanctification once for all
by delighting to do that will; He becomes our Sanctification in personal
experience, by teaching us to delight to do it. He learned to do it; He
could not become perfect in doing it otherwise than by suffering. In
suffering He draws nigh; He makes our suffering the fellowship of His
suffering; and in it makes Himself, who was perfected through suffering,
our Sanctification.

O ye suffering ones! all ye whom the Father is chastening! come and see
Jesus suffering, giving up His will, being made perfect, sanctifying
Himself. _His suffering is the secret of His Holiness, of His Glory, of
His Life._ Will you not thank God for anything that can admit you into
the nearer fellowship of your blessed Lord? Shall we not accept every
trial, great or small, as the call of His love to be one with Himself in
living only for God's will. This is Holiness, to be one with Jesus as He
does the will of God, to abide in Jesus who was made perfect through
suffering.

_Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God's love._ Many a father has
been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after
being punished in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than
before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their
Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes
their faith in God's Love, it is just through suffering that His
children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so
distinctly a father's prerogative; it leads so directly to the
confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so
powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it
does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest
guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the
school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all
Love, and that Holines