Support in Affliction

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore will not we fear,  though  the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea." Ps. xlvi. 1, 2.

When, Father, thou dost send the chastening rod,
Oh, what am I, that I should dare reply,
Thy love arraign, thy righteousness deny,
And set the creature in array with God?
Far be it from my soul to question Thee,
For I am nought. Be this my only prayer,
That I may have due strength the rod to bear,
And bless the hand that doth environ me.
So that, what time the outward man doth perish,
Smitten with many stripes, inflicted deep,
The inward man renewed hopes may cherish,
And high above the storms in glory sweep.
We sink in the deep waters; but thy hand
Shall hold us in the waves, and bring us safe to land.

— American Cottage Life (1850) XV.

Redemption

The great result, therefore, of the plan of redemption, when fully carried out in relation to man, is to restore him to such a position of harmony with God, that he may be said ever afterwards to live in and from God. Nothing short of this is redemption; — nothing short of this is worthy to be thought of and to be regarded as redemption.

And this great result, — a result on which depends union or separation, life or death, happiness or woe, — is made to turn upon his own free choice. It is not left to him, however, to choose a mixed or middle course. And the reason is that there is no such course. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." There can be but one true life, and that is life from God. Our heavenly Father, dwelling in man as the Divine Teacher or Comforter, must be the whole, the true life and the whole life in us or he can be nothing. And this is a matter, which, as a moral agent, man is called upon to decide for himself; — namely, whether God, without dividing his influence with any other master or teacher, shall be his inward life, and thus be, in all coming time, the inspiration and source of all good. This choice is given him in Christ. If he accepts God, he lives. If he rejects him, he dies.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 7, Chapter 2.