Quote of the Day

"Afflictions are as nails, driven by the hand of grace, which crucify us to the world. The husbandman ploughs his lands, and the gardener prunes his trees, to make them fruitful. The jeweler cuts and polishes his diamonds, to make them shine the brighter. The refiner flings his gold into the furnace, that it may come out the purer. And God afflicts His people, to make them better. 'To thank God for mercies, ' said a pious divine of the last century, 'is the way to increase them: to thank him for miseries, is the way to remove them. Afflictions are then blessings to us, when we can bless God for afflictions: whose single view, in causing us to pass through the fire, is only to separate the sin He hates from the soul He loves.' And, in all His dealings with them, let them remember that, though He cause grief, yet He will have compassion: at the worst of times, He will either suit His dispensations to their strength, or accommodate their strength to His dispensations. And when the faith of an afflicted saint is in exercise, his grace, as a good man expresses it, 'resemble a garden of roses, or a well of rose-water; which the more they are stirred and agitated by the storm, the sweeter is the fragrance they exhale.'"

             - Augustus Toplady