my tears to flow; he maketh them subservient to my eternal sanctification. Since his hand hath weighed so heavily, and in so singular a way upon me, and since no earthly resource seems to be left me, I consider myself as having at last become an object more worthy of his cares and of his regards. Ah! if I still enjoyed a serene and happy situation, his looks would no longer be upon me; he would neglect me, and I should be blended before him with so many others who are the prosperous of the earth. Beloved sufferings, which, in depriving me of all human aids, restore me to God, and render him mine only resource in all my sorrows! Precious afflictions, which in turning me aside from all creatures, are the cause that I now become the continual object of the remembrance and of the mercies of my Lord!
I might reply to you, in the second place, that common and momentary afflictions would have aroused our faith but for an instant. We would soon have found, in every thing around us, a thousand resources to obliterate the remembrance of that slight misfortune. Pleasures, human consolations, the new events which the world is continually offering to our sight, would soon have beguiled our sorrow, and restored our relish for the world, and for its vain amusements; and our heart, always in concert with all the objects which flatter it, would soon have been tired of its sighs and of its sorrows. But the Lord, in sending afflictions in which religion alone can become our resource, hath meant to preclude all return toward the world, and to place between our weakness and us a barrier which can never be shaken by either time or accidents: he hath anticipated our inconstancy, in rendering precautions necessary to us, which might not perhaps have always appeared equally useful. He read, in the character of our heart, that our fidelity in flying the dangers of, and separating ourselves from the world, would not extend beyond our sorrow; that the same moment which beheld us consoled would witness our change; that, in forgetting our chagrins, we would soon have forgotten our pious resolutions; and that short-lived afflictions would have made us only short-lived righteous. He hath therefore established the continuance of our piety upon that of our sufferings; he hath lodged fixed and constant afflictions as sureties for the constancy of our faith: and lest, in leaving our soul in our own power, we should again restore it to the world, he hath resolved to render it safe, by attaching it for ever to the foot of the cross. We are thoroughly sensible ourselves that a great blow was required to rouse us from our lethargy; that we had been little benefited by the slight afflictions with which the Lord hath hitherto been pleased to visit us; and that scarcely had he stricken us, when we had forgotten the hand that had inflicted so salutary a wound. Of what, then, O my God, should I complain? That excess which I find in my troubles, is an excess of thy mercies. I do not consider that the less thou sparest the patient, the more thou hastenest his cure, and that all the utility and all the security of our sufferings consist in the rigour of thy blows. My sweetest consolation in the
