_Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God's love._ Many a father has been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after being punished in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes their faith in God's Love, it is just through suffering that His children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so distinctly a father's prerogative; it leads so directly to the confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all Love, and that Holiness is the fire of Love, consuming that it may purify, destroying the dross only that it may assimilate into its own perfect purity all that yields itself to the wondrous change. 'We know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love: and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in Him.' Man's destiny is fellowship with God, the fellowship, the mutual indwelling of love. It is only by faith that this Love of God can be known. And faith can only grow by exercise, can only thrive in trial: when visible things fail, its energy is roused to yield itself to be possessed by the Invisible, by the Divine. Chastisement is the nurse of faith; one of its chosen attendants, to lead deeper into the Love of God. This is the new and living way, the way of the rent flesh in fellowship with Jesus leading up into the Holiest of all. There it is seen how the Justice that will not spare the child, and the Love that sustains and sanctifies it, are both one in the Holiness of God. 0 ye chastened saints! who are so specially being led in the way that goes through the rent veil of the flesh, you have boldness to enter in. Draw near; come and dwell in the Holiest of all. Make your abode in the Holiest of all: there you are made partakers of _His_ Holiness. Chastisement is bringing your heart into unity with God's Will, God's Son, God's Love. Abide in God's Will. Abide in God's Son. Abide in God's Love. Dwell, within the veil, in the Holiest of all. BE YE HOLY, AS I AM HOLY.