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)