" And this inner strength and consciousness, through faith,
in an indwelling Christ enabled him to receive suffering and
trial, not stoically as the Red Indian, nor hilariously, in a
spirit of bravado, but cheerfully and with a thankful heart.
Arnold of Rugby has written something about his "most dear and
blessed sister" that illustrates the power flowing from
exhaustless fountains of inner joy and strength through the
working of the Holy Spirit. He says:--
"I never saw a more perfect instance of the spirit and power of
love, and of a sound mind. Her life was a daily martyrdom for
twenty years, during which she adhered to her early-formed
resolution of never talking about herself; she was thoughtful
about the very pins and ribands of my wife's dress, about the
making of a doll's cap for a child--but of herself, save only as
regarded her ripening in all goodness, wholly thoughtless,
enjoying everything lovely, graceful, beautiful, high-minded,
whether in God's works or man's, with the keenest relish;
inheriting the earth to the very fullness of the promise, though
never leaving her crib, nor changing her posture; and preserved,
through the very valley of the shadow of death, from all fear or
impatience, and from every cloud of impaired reason, which might
mar the beauty of Christ's and the Spirit's work."
It is not by hypnotising the soul, nor by blessing it into a
state of ecstatic insensibility, that the Lord enables the man
filled with the Spirit to thus triumph over suffering.
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