Suffering is the diet of the Lord's family. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth."--"If ye be without chastisement, then are ye bastards, and not sons."--"Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God."--"All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (Heb. xii. 6, 8; Acts xiv. 22; 2 Tim. iii. 12.) When Bishop Latimer was told by his landlord that he had never had a trouble, "Then," said he, "God cannot be here." Suffering is a part of the process by which the sons of God are sanctified. They are chastened to wean them from the world, and make them partakers of God's holiness. The Captain of their salvation was "made perfect through suffering," and so are they. (Heb. ii. 10; xii. 10.) There never yet was a great saint who had not either great afflictions or great corruptions. Well said Philip Melancthon: "Where there are no cares there will generally be no prayers." Let us try to settle this down into our hearts also. The sons of God have all to bear a cross. A suffering Saviour generally has suffering disciples. The Bridegroom was a man of sorrows. The Bride must not be a woman of pleasures and unacquainted with grief. Blessed are they that mourn! Let us not murmur at the cross. This also is a sign of sonship. I warn men never to suppose that they are sons of God except they have the scriptural marks of sonship. Beware of a sonship without evidences. Again I say, Beware. When a man has no leading of the Spirit to show me, no spirit of adoption to tell of, no witness of the Spirit in his conscience, no cross in his experience,--is this man a son of God? Whatever others may think I dare not say so! His spot is "not the spot of God's children." (Deut. xxxii. 5.) He is no heir of glory. Tell me not that you have been baptized and taught the catechism of the Church of England, and therefore must be a child of God. I tell you that the parish register is not the book of life. I tell you that to be styled a child of God, and called regenerate in infancy by the faith and charity of the Prayer-book, is one thing; but to be a child of God in deed, another thing altogether. Go and read that catechism again. It is the "death unto sin and the new birth unto righteousness," which makes men _children of grace_. Except you know these by experience, you are no son of God. Tell me not that you are a member of Christ's Church, and so must be a son. I answer that the sons of the Church are not necessarily the sons of God. Such sonship is not the sonship of the eighth of Romans. That is the sonship you must have if you are to be saved. And now, I doubt not some reader of this paper will want to know if he may not be saved without the witness of the Spirit.