“Though now He frowns, I’ll praise the Almighty’s name,
    And bless the source whence past enjoyments came.”

We often hear it said, that every thing which happens to us is for our good, even in this world.—­Many things happen to men, even to Christians, which are plainly not for their good in this life, though all things will, eventually, work together for good to them that love God.  Some things, then, even here, are intended to be life-long sorrows and trials.  Their object is reproof and constant admonition.  We need another state of existence to explain the present.  If that future state does not prove that earthly discipline has had its designed effect, the sorrows of this life show that God can bear to see us suffer, even when he foresees that no good will result to the sufferer.  For while men suffer excruciatingly under bereavements, these sufferings often fail to make them better.  God foresees all this.  Hence God is able to look upon suffering which he sees will not be for the good of the afflicted.

If, now, his design in our trials (which pierced his heart before they reached ours) is utterly frustrated by our sins, the question will arise, whether the God who can bear to see us suffer for our good, which, nevertheless, he foresees will not be effected, will not be able to see us suffer as the fruit of our sins, and of our resistance to his designs.  One who has endured much mental suffering cannot have failed to see, that God’s parental relation to us is not analogous to that of parent and child among men.  It terminates in the relations of governor and of judge; being, indeed, from the first, included in those relations.  This is not so in our earthly relationship.  God sees men suffer as no earthly parent could; he inflicts pain as no earthly parent should.  All is for our profit; but if that object fails through our perverseness, we are instructed, by our experience, that if God can look on mental anguish and not relieve it, because he seeks an ulterior good, the punishment of sin, the natural and just consequences of disobedience to the great laws of the universe, may be, in their extended impression, another ulterior good, which will warrant the same mental sufferings after death, and forever.

Could I be permitted, therefore, I would take by the hand every bereaved father whom so great an affliction as the death of a child has not succeeded in bringing into a state of preparation for heaven, and kindly ask how he expects to bear a final and endless separation.  “If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” God describes to his ancient people one of the great sorrows which will happen to them, if they forsake him, in their separations, by captivity, from their children:  “Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto