,' but understand
somewhat how Divinely becoming and meet it is that we too should be
sanctified by suffering.

'He chasteneth us for our profit, that we should be made partakers of
His holiness.' Of all the precious words Holy Scripture has for the
sorrowful, there is hardly one that leads us more directly and more
deeply into the fulness of blessing that suffering is meant to bring. It
is _His Holiness_, God's own Holiness, we are to be made partakers of.
The Epistle had spoken very clearly of our sanctification from its
Divine side, as wrought out for us, and to be wrought in us, by Jesus
Himself. 'He which sanctifieth and they which are sanctified are all of
one.' 'We have been sanctified by the one offering of Christ.' In our
text we have the other side, the progressive work by which we are
personally to accept and voluntarily to appropriate this Divine
Holiness. In view of all there is in us that is at variance with God's
will, and that must be discovered and broken down, before we understand
what it is to give up our will and delight in God's; in view of the
personal fellowship of suffering which alone can lead to the full
appreciation of what Jesus bore and did for us; in view, too, of the
full personal entrance into and satisfaction with the love of God as our
sufficient portion; chastisement and suffering are indispensable
elements in God's work of making holy. In these three aspects we shall
see how what the Son needed is what we need, how what was of such
unspeakable value to the Son will to us be no less rich in blessing.

_Chastisement leads to the acceptance of God's will._ We have seen how
God's will is our sanctification; how it is in the will of God Christ
has sanctified us; yea more, how He found the power to sanctify us in
sanctifying Himself by the entire surrender of His will to God. His 'I
delight to do Thy will' derived its worth from His continual 'Not my
will.' And wherever God comes with chastisement or suffering, the very
first object He has in view is, to ask and to work in us union with His
own blessed will, that through it we may have union with Himself and
His love. He comes in some one single point in which His will crosses
our most cherished affection or desire, and asks the surrender of what
we will to what He wills. When this is done willingly and lovingly, He
leads the soul on to see how the claim for the sacrifice in the
individual matter is the assertion of a principle--that in ev