Uses of Adversity

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It is good for man to suffer the adversity of this earthly life, for it brings him back to the sacred retirement of the heart, where only he finds he is an exile from his native home, and ought not to place his trust in any worldly enjoyment. It is good for him also to meet with contradiction and reproach, and to be evil thought of, and evil spoken of, even when his intentions are upright and his actions blameless, for this keeps him humble, and is a powerful antidote to the poison of vain-glory: and then chiefly it is that we have recourse to the witness within us, which is God, when we are outwardly despised, and held in no degree of esteem and favor among men. Our dependence upon Him ought to be so entire and absolute that we should never think it necessary, in any kind of distress, to have recourse to human consolation.

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