not see that it is because all these petty trials are so severe to you, therefore are they sent?  All these amiable qualities that I have enumerated, and the love which they win for you, would make you admire and value yourself too much, unless your system were reduced, so to speak, by a series of petty but continued annoyances.  As I said before, you must seek to strengthen your faith by tracing the close connection between these annoyances and the “needs be” for them.  It is probably exactly at the time when you are too much elated by praise and admiration that you are sent some counterbalancing annoyance, or perhaps suffered to fall into some fault of temper which will lessen you in your own eyes, as well as in those of others.  You are often troubled by some annoyance, too, when you have blamed others for being too easily overcome by an annoyance of the very same kind.  “Stand upon” an anxious “watch,” and you will see how constantly severe judgments of others are punished by falling ourselves into temptations similar to those which we had treated as light ones when sitting in judgment upon others.  If you would acquire the habit of exercising faith with respect to the smallest details of your every-day life, by such faith the light itself might be won, and your eyes be opened to see how wondrously all things, even those which appear the most needlessly worrying, are made to work together for your good.[17] These are, however, but the first lessons in the school of faith, the first steps on the road which leads to “rest in God.”

Severer trials are hastening onward, for which your present petty trials are serving as a preparatory discipline.  According to the manner in which these are met and supported, will be your patience in the hour of deep darkness and bitter desolation.  Waste not one of your present petty sorrows:  let them all, by the help of prayer, and watchfulness, and self-control, work their appointed work in your soul.  Let them lead you each day more and more trustingly to “cast all your care upon Him who careth for you."[18] In the present hours of tranquillity and calm, let the light and infrequent storms, the passing clouds that disturb your peace, serve as warnings to you to find a sure refuge before the clouds of affliction become so heavy, and its storms so violent, that there will be no power of seeking a haven of security.  That must be sought and found in seasons of comparative peace.  Though the agonized soul may finally, through the waves of sorrow, make its way into the ark, its long previous struggles, and its after harrowing doubts and fears, will shatter it nearly to pieces before it finds a final refuge.  It may, indeed, by the free grace of God, be saved at the last, but during the remainder of its earthly pilgrimage there is no hope for it of joy and peace in believing.