Originally published in The Quiver (John Cassell) vol.1 #5 (21 Oct 1865).
If we would appreciate common mercies we need for a season to be deprived of them. We should think it an almost unendurable hardship to pass a night under the shelter of a deserted cabin; yet a company of poor wrecked mariners, who were crowded for a week into one small boat, floating about in the midst of icebergs which chilled their frames to the bone, thought, "What princely accommodations a beggar's pillow would be on tho straw of the threshing floor!"
We think but little of the common objects of interest which God has crowded in our pathway. "We regard not the operation of his hands" in all these wonderful works. We are slow to read "sermons in stones and books in running brooks." But if we were shut within four narrow walls, how hungrily would the mind grope round for something to feed upon. No wonder that prisoners have made companions and pets of flies and spiders, watching all their curious ways, and gaining instruction from them, as far as they could instruct them. One prisoner of state, immured in a darkened cell, felt that his mind would prey on itself unless some employment could be devised. He found on his coat six pins, which had escaped the eyes of those who had searched him; and these he made the means of the preservation of his reason. He would cast them from him, away into the darkness, and then spend hours in searching for them. When all were gathered up he would repeat the process. And so, for six long years, he continued to fight off insanity by this curious process; after which he was liberated. He would not, however, leave his cell until he had gathered up all his pins; and, crooked and tarnished as they were, they were set in a case of gold and gems, and worn, as an ornament more precious than diamonds, by one who had waited and watched for him with a wife's devotion all those weary years.
It isa common device of Satan to shut up a good man in prison with the hope of cutting off his usefulness. But in this he often outwits himself. His cause gained but little by the imprisonment of good John Bunyan in Bedford gaol, and. less still by the imprisonment of Paul, by the order of a cruel Nero. There was an almighty hand guiding even these seemingly adverse providences. No danger was apprehended by allowing these good men pen and paper. Paul never troubled the tyrant by petitions for his release. There was something which lay nearer his great heart than his own safety and comfort. It was the care of all the churches he had planted, the burden of those precious souls gathered there of whom he must give an account at the bar of God.
He knew what hand could open the prison doors whenever his prison work should be done; and if it was His will that he should be offered up, he was ready for the offering.
It was when a prisoner in Wartburg Castle that Luther translated the Scriptures, and wrote some of his most valuable works. Here the brave defender of the faith preached every Sabbath, and ceased not day nor night to proclaim Christ's Gospel to all who would hear.
Perhaps the world had never heard those songs of heavenly sweetness which flowed from the pen of Madame Guyon, but for those ten weary years in the Bastille.
Who can reflect without a shudder upon those dark yaults of the Inquisition, where so many helpless victims have been immured, to await the mockery of a trial by judges whose hearts were steel, and whose decisions were sealed up before the culprit was called to stand before them? There is a day coming when all those fearful secrets shall be brought to light, and when the condemned and the judge shall change places. Oh, in that day what joy it would be to those merciless ones to hide for ever in the gloomiest deeps of those mildewed, loathsome cayerns, if they might but hide themselves "from the wrath of the Lamb!" The inscriptions found upon some of those walls when the strong armed conqueror threw open their charnel homes to the light and air of heaven, breathe a faith higher and stronger than any massive walls of stone could imprison. Though lingering, terrible torture was before them, they could still feel
"That come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but death who comes at last,"
and after death eternal glory. For ever before the throne of God, clothed in white raiment should those stand who had "come through great tribulations, and had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."