Walterick Printing Co. Fort Dodge, Iowa

To
Aggie and Harry
and
all their fellow-sufferers,
patient in tribulation,
cheerful in spirit,
serving the Lord.

The Foreword

“The law of average eventually catches up with each one of us,” said a nurse to a friend who entered the hospital for an operation. “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” declared Eliphaz the Temanite. “We all have our troubles, for in life we are in the midst of death,” asserts the man of the street. Such is the cold stoical comfort of human reasoning.

The child of God is not immune to affliction, but in this he has available the strength of his Great High Priest, the knowledge of the Divine Revelation, and the understanding of the purposes of Infinite Love. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:28-29).

That all Christians do not appropriate such excellent provision is very obvious for there are many who faint in the day of adversity. The lack of the knowledge of God’s dealings with His children leaves them submerged in distress or crushed by despair.

For his own profit and consolation each saint should acquire some understanding of the alchemy of grace that transmutes every trial into all good. The process of this transmutation may seem very difficult to the immature, but hidden in the Holy Scriptures lies the procedure by which our Heavenly Father, through these changes, develops in His own that good, the image of Christ, This work He will carry on until all stand in glory physically, morally, and regally like Christ.

It is only befitting that the Spirit of Grace should minister through the gifts to the Church biblical instruction which deals with God’s love for, and His training of, His children. This booklet contains such instruction, and one is grateful to David Kirk for the thorough and methodical manner in which he has treated the subject, “The Mystery of Divine Chastening.”

This treatise has been perused carefully with pleasure and with profit. The contents have been a blessing, consequently, I would recommend, that it not be read merely in a cursory way, but that it be studied intensively and prayerfully, and that each reference to the Scriptures be examined thoughtfully.

May the instruction so excellently presented result in the dissemination of true knowledge that will enlighten the ignorant, console the confused, strengthen the sorrowing, pacify the perplexed, and stabilize the spiritual experience of those who are exercised thereby.

Now may the God of Patience and of Consolation grant His blessing upon the ministry of these pages, may every reader secure benefit from the time spent over them, and may Christ be magnified in the prosperity and adversity, the life and death of every learner in the school of God.

James Gunn
Midland, Ontario.