The Church, the bride of Christ, is black without (Cant. i. 5), because of her afflictions and persecutions; but within she is comely and beautiful, because she enjoys the consolations of the divine Spirit. The Church is as a garden enclosed (Cant. iv. 12), and so is every faithful soul, since no one knows its beauty unless he is within it. And never shall we know fully and perfectly the consolations of the Spirit of God, unless the power of the flesh over us is destroyed by affliction. If the love of the world fills our hearts, then the love of God can find no entrance therein. A vessel already full cannot be filled with some new liquid unless it be first emptied. Let us therefore empty our hearts of the love of the world, that we may fill them with the love of God. So God, in sending the cross, seeks to destroy the love of the world in us, that the divine love may find place in our heart. The cross, moreover, leads us to prayer, and becomes the occasion for the exercise in us of Christian virtues. When the north wind blows upon the garden, its spices flow out (Cant. iv. 16), and when persecutions sweep over the Church then are developed those peculiar graces and virtues which are so pleasing to God. The beloved Bridegroom of the soul is white and ruddy (Cant. v. 10); white in His holy innocence, ruddy in the blood-marks of His passion; and that the beloved bride of Christ may be made pure and white in her virtues, she is made ruddy by her sufferings for His name’s sake.

From the hardest stone of our afflictions divine grace can bring forth oil and honey, and from the bitter root of present suffering the sweetest fruit of eternal glory.

And to this eternal glory, O Lord Jesus, lead us on and on, and to its blissful enjoyment finally bring us! Amen. (Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations – XLI: The Principle of Christian Patience, Repristination Press, p. 240-241)

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)