But consider the blessed advantages of the cross. It destroys the roots of worldly love in us, and implants the love of God in our heart. The cross begets within us a hatred of the world, and lifts up our minds to the contemplation of things heavenly and divine. If we mortify the deeds of the flesh, the Holy Spirit lives within us; and as the world becomes bitter to our souls, Christ becomes sweeter and sweeter. Greater, indeed, are the mysterious influences and blessing of the cross, since by it God calls us to contrition for our sins, to a true and holy fear of Himself, and to the exercise of patience. When the Lord stands at our heart’s door and knocks, let us open to Him, and hear what He shall speak in our souls. Oh, the world and the carnal outward man may look with contempt upon the cross, but to God and in the eyes of the inward spiritual man it is glorious. What could be more abject and despicable than the passion of Christ, our Saviour, in the eyes of the Jews; and yet what could be more glorious and precious than that same passion of Christ in the eyes of God; since this is the price He paid for the atonement of the sins of the whole world (1 John ii. 2)? And so the righteous man is afflicted: “The righteous man perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart” (Is. lvii. 1); but how precious is the cross,—“precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Ps. cxvi. 15). (Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations – XLI: The Principle of Christian Patience, Repristination Press, p. 239-240)

Consider, moreover, the tribulation which the saints of the past have endured. Behold the patriarch Job, “as he sat down among the ashes” to weep (Job ii. 8); John the Baptist fasting in the wilderness (Luke iii. 2); Peter extended upon a cross, and James beheaded by the sword of Herod (Acts xii. 2). Think of Mary, the blessed mother of our Saviour, standing with pierced heart under the cross (John xix. 25), who in some sense becomes a type of Christ’s Church, the spiritual mother of our Lord. “Blessed are ye,” says Christ, “when men shall persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matt. v. 11, 12). O glorious persecutions, which link us to the apostles and prophets, and to all the saints, aye to our blessed Christ Himself. Let us patiently suffer then with the saints of God, who have suffered in His cause; let us even rejoice to be crucified with those who have been crucified, that we may at last be glorified with those who have been glorified. If we are indeed sons of God, let us not refuse to share the portion of the rest of His children. If we truly desire to be heirs of God, let us joyfully accept all that heirship involves. But let us remember that as sons of God we are heirs not only of the joy and glory of the future life, but also of the sorrow and of the suffering of this present life, for “God scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Heb. xii. 6). He punishes our sins here that He may spare us punishment in the day of judgment; He lays tribulation after tribulation upon us here, that there He may bestow upon us an exceeding weight of glory; and, indeed, the reward far exceeds, in proportion, the persecutions we suffer here. (Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations – XLI: The Principle of Christian Patience, Repristination Press, p. 237-238)