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She remarked to her sister once, "Oh, Marie, if I might but have five minutes' ease from pain! I don't want ever to moan when gentle sister Ellen comes in. How I am troubling you all!" Health gradually returned to her, and with it she recommenced her active work for the Master. The Refiner's work in F.R. Havergal was very evident.
"But a manly repentance may temper and brace the character in a way that no other repented fall can. It is the brooding natures which make me tremble; in healthier natures it is the refiner's fire which stings and consecrates: 'Sanat dum ferit. "But the subject is very repugnant to me.
Paul of old, and "whatsoever things are true, venerable, just, pure, lovely, and of good report if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, to think on these things," on these scattered fragmentary sacraments of Him whose number is not two, nor seven, "but seventy-times seven;" that is the way I think, the only way to be ready to recognise our Saviour, and to prepare to meet our God; that He may be to us, too, as a refiner's fire, and refine us our thoughts, our deeds, our characters throughout.
He never preached to us, nor indeed would he talk freely of his "experiences" amongst such Calvinists as my grandfather and grandmother. "The gold of the kingdom doth not need the refiner's art!" he had said once when this remissness was made a reproach to him. Since the loss of his boat, the Tabernacle, he had bought first one donkey and then two with his little savings.
But if he be faithful, and withstand these trials, if he shall come forth from these temptations and sufferings like pure gold from the refiner's fire, then, indeed, shall he be deemed "well-formed, true, and trusty," and worthy to offer "unto the Lord an offering in righteousness."
The voice of God from heaven proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth was his beloved Son, in whom He was well pleased; and the Baptist could have no further doubt that the Desire of all Nations, the Lord whom his people sought, the Messenger of the Covenant, had suddenly come to his temple to act as a refiner's fire and as fullers' soap.
He gives them blessings at first, to show them that He is really with them; and then He lets them be evil-entreated by tyrants, and suffer persecution, and wander out of the way in the wilderness, that they may be made perfect by suffering, and purified, as gold is in the refiner's fire, from all selfishness, conceit, ambition, cowardliness, till they learn to trust God utterly, to know their own weakness, and His strength, and to work only for Him, careless what becomes of their own poor worthless selves, provided they can help His kingdom to come, and get His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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