Craig T. Owens

“If our Father permits a trial to come, it must be because the trial is the sweetest and best thing that could happen to us, and we must accept it with thanks from His dear hand.

“… A very good illustration of this may be found in the familiar fact of a mother giving medicine to her dearly loved child. The bottle holds the medicine, but the mother gives it; and the bottle is not responsible, but the mother. No matter how full her closet may be of bottles of medicine, the mother will not allow one drop to be given to the child unless she believes it will be good for it; but when she does believe it will be good for her darling, the very depth of her love compels her to force it on the child, no matter how bitter may be its taste. The human beings around us are often the bottles that hold our medicine, but it is our Father’s hand of love that pours out the medicine, and compels us to drink it. The human bottle is the ‘second cause’ of our trial; but it has no real agency in it, for the medicine that these human ‘bottles’ hold is prescribed for us and given to us by the Great Physician of our souls, who is seeking thereby to heal all our spiritual diseases.” —Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian’s Secret Of A Happy Life