“我父所给我的那杯，我岂可不喝呢？”（约18章11节）

　　亲爱的读者，你可知道说这句话，比平静风和海，叫死人复活更伟大吗？先知和使徒能行许多神迹奇事，却不能事事遵行忍受神的旨意。遵行忍受神的旨意是最高点的信心，是基督徒所能作到的最高一点。有时候你光明的希望遭了永久的毁灭；每天所背负的重担永得不着减轻；当你渴望有充足的财力能使所爱的过些幸福舒适的生活时，反遭到了贫穷拮据；或者竟被身体上不治的病症捆锁拘禁在病榻上；赤裸裸地被剥夺了一切所爱的人们，剩下你独自一人孤孤单单地去抵御一切外来的袭击——在这种试炼之下，你依然能说：“我父所给我的那杯，我岂可不喝呢？”——这就是最高点的信心！这就是最高点属灵的成功！——巴赫司脱（Dr.Charles Parkhurst）

　　我们自己不出代价，就不能帮助别人；我们的痛苦就是我们所付的代价，叫我们以后能同情于他人的难堪。要做一个帮助人的人，必须先做一个受苦的人；要做一个救人的人，必须先经过十字架的对付；我们若不喝主所喝的杯，受主所受的苦，就不能享受救助人的那种人生最高的喜乐。

　　大卫的诗篇中最能安慰人的几篇，乃是在苦难中压出来的；如果保罗没有一根刺加在他肉体上，在他许多的书信上一定会失去许多温柔！

"The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11.)

THIS was a greater thing to say and do than to calm the seas or raise the dead. Prophets and apostles could work wondrous miracles, but they could not always do and suffer the will of God. To do and suffer God's will is still the highest form of faith, the most sublime Christian achievement. To have the bright aspirations of a young life forever blasted; to bear a daily burden never congenial and to see no relief; to be pinched by poverty when you only desire a competency for the good and comfort of loved ones; to be fettered by some incurable physical disability; to be stripped bare of loved ones until you stand alone to meet the shocks of life-to be able to say in such a school of discipline, "The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" -this is faith at its highest and spiritual success at the crowning point. Great faith is exhibited not so much in ability to do as to suffer. --- Dr. Charles Parkhurst.

To have a sympathizing God we must have a suffering Saviour, and there is no true fellow-feeling with another save in the heart of him who has been afflicted like him.

We cannot do good to others save at a cost to ourselves, and our afflictions are the price we pay for our ability to sympathize. He who would be a helper, must first be a sufferer. He who would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have been upon a cross; and we cannot have the highest happiness of life in succoring others without tasting the cup which Jesus drank, and submitting to the baptism wherewith He was baptized.

The most comforting of David's psalms were pressed out by suffering; and if Paul had not had his thorn in the flesh we had missed much of that tenderness which quivers in so many of his letters.

The present circumstance, which presses so hard against you (if surrendered to Christ), is the best shaped tool in the Father's hand to chisel you for eternity. Trust Him, then. Do not push away the instrument lest you lose its work."

"Strange and difficult indeed
We may find it,
But the blessing that we need
Is behind it."

　The school of suffering graduates rare scholars.