There is none of us that has so laid to heart our past difficulties
and trials that it is safe for God to burn the rod as long as we are
in this life.

Dear friends! do not let it be said of us, 'In vain have I smitten thy
children. They have received no correction'; but rather let us keep
close to Him, and seek to learn the sweet and loving meaning of His
sharpest strokes. Then the little book, 'written within and without
with lamentation and woe,' which we all in our turn have to absorb and
make our own, may be 'bitter in the mouth,' but will be 'sweet as
honey' thereafter.



MANASSEH'S SIN AND REPENTANCE

'So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and
to do worse than the heathen, whom the Lord had destroyed before the
children of Israel. 10. And the Lord spake to Manasseh, and to his
people: but they would not hearken. 11. Wherefore the Lord brought
upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took
Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him
to Babylon. 12. And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord
his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,
13. And prayed unto him: and he was intreated of him, and heard his
supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew that the Lord He was God. 14. Now after this he
built a wall without the city of David, on the west side of Gihon, in
the valley, even to the entering in at the fish gate, and compassed
about Ophel, and raised it up a very great height, and put captains of