Bible Dictionaries
Affliction: Noble Piety Nourished Amid

Spurgeon's Illustration Collection

'The pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, brings into them all possible elements of order and precision. Lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope. But let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. Thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem, it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the tree lives.' Amid the sternest trials the most upright Christian's are usually reared. The divine life within them so triumphs over every difficulty as to render the men, above all others, true and exact. What a noble spectacle is a man whom, nothing can warp, a firm, decided servant of God, defying hurricanes of temptation!

Bibliography Information
Spurgeon, Charles. Entry for 'Affliction: Noble Piety Nourished Amid'. Spurgeon's Illustration Collection. https://www.studylight.org/​dictionaries/​eng/​fff/​a/affliction-noble-piety-nourished-amid.html. 1870.