And so it came about, through the use of the means which the prophet prescribed, that Hezekiah improved,--_improved_, I repeat, only physically, to natural strength and health? Is that all that his sickness was intended for, that is included in his recovery? Is that all that our affliction is intended for, that, having been confined to the sick-room for a while, we return to our work and calling as before? Hezekiah was a wiser man than that. The song that he wrote after his recovery, recorded in the 38th chapter of Isaiah, shows that looking death in the face had not failed of good results. No man, if he be a thinking man, can be brought to the brink of the grave, and raised almost as if from the dead, without some benefit from the experience. For one thing, it ought to make him a better Christian. "Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee, e'en though it be a cross that raiseth me." Luther was wont to say that his three great teachers were prayer, study, and trial, and any reader of his life can perceive that if it had not been for the experiences that he passed through, he would not have been the sturdy character that he was. What the tempering is to the iron, giving it the toughness and endurance of steel, that afflictions are to the soul. The wind might shake and uproot the stripling of a tree, but its blasts are harmless to the oak that has passed through many a hurricane and storm. And so unbelief may give out its miserable twaddle, the faithless world raise its scoffing and deriding tongue, the man who once turned his face to the wall and prayed will not be upset, he knows whom he has believed, what he has experienced in his own soul and life. And, again, as it strengthened his faith in God, Hezekiah, after his recovery, was a faithful servant of the Lord, using his kingly authority to bring his people back to the true worship of Jehovah. Simply enough; a man who has been in the very grip of the last enemy and has recovered, cannot but reason thus: "What if I had died? These possessions would have been no longer mine. They cannot, therefore, be mine at all in the highest sense; they must have been entrusted to me by God, and I must use them for God." Usefulness, in most cases, is the result of discipline, the trials we have passed through. Who is the sympathetic person? You will find it to be him who has passed through similar affliction that you are passing through. Who is the one that is willing to give a helping hand? Not the priest and the Levite, who, if we knew their prior testing, never knew a serious affliction,--but the Good Samaritan, who very likely knew from personal experience what it meant to be waylaid. And so, to conclude, despise not the chastening of the Almighty. Learn to look upon it aright; go to the right source for relief, and thus derive from it the spiritual benefit which God designs. May you lay up what you have heard against that time when you need it, for there comes a time when you will need it. Amen.