Affliction, a School of Comfort.
I. Sometimes we look with pleasure on those who have never been afflicted. We look with a smile of interest upon the smooth brow and open countenance, and our hearts thrill within us at the ready laugh or the piercing glance. There is a buoyancy and freshness of mind in those who have never suffered which, beautiful as it is, is perhaps scarcely suitable and safe in sinful man. It befits an angel; it befits very young persons and children, who have never been delivered over to their three great enemies. I will not dare to deny that there are those whose white garments and unfading chaplets show that they have a right to rejoice always, even till God takes them. But this is not the case of many, whom earth soils, and who lose their right to be merry-hearted. God brings His saints into pain, that they may be like what Christ was, and may be led to think of Him, not of themselves.
II. Taught by our own pain, our own sorrow, nay, by our own sin, we shall have hearts and minds exercised for every service of love towards those who need it. We shall in our measure be comforters after the image of the Almighty Paraclete, and that in all senses of the word advocates, assistants, soothing aids. Our words of advice, our very manner, voice, and look, will be gentle and tranquillizing, as of those who have borne their cross after Christ. We shall not pass by His little ones rudely, as the world does. The voices of the widow and the orphan, the poor and the destitute, will at once reach our ears, however low they speak. Our hearts will open towards them, our words and deeds befriend them. The ruder passions of man's nature, pride and anger, envy and strife, which so disorder the Church, these will be quelled and brought under in others by the earnestness and kindness of our admonition. Thus, instead of being the selfish creatures that we were by nature, grace, acting through suffering, tends to make us ready teachers and witnesses of truth to all men.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. v., p. 300.
References: 2 Corinthians 1:5. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 13; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 43; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 249. 2 Corinthians 1:6. E. M. Goulburn, Occasional Sermons,p. 327. 2 Corinthians 1:6-7. S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble,p. 66. 2 Corinthians 1:9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1536.