Adversity

There is certainly one thing in which adversity yields gain to godly men , since it calls away their affections from the earth and from earthly things , or even wrests them off while pertinaciously adhering to them . " It is expedient , doubtless , that they should experience hardships here , lest they should like this poor lodging as if it were their own home ." They should as if they are 'strangers and pilgrims upon earth ' , that they may more frequently and with more ardent longing , sigh for their fatherland , and very often repeat it , Home ! Dear Home ! Best Home ! For the sons and heirs of the kingdom must be weaned by this wormwood , lest , allured by the blandishments of the flesh , and the poisoned sweetness of the world , they barter away those true and pure joys of their blessed hope for these false , and foul and fatal joys ; and lest the heavenly soul , being subjugated should give way to pleasures and be overmastered by the flesh , the pernicious root of manifold miseries . In fine , we see how much vigour and vehemence adversity adds to prayer ; for the divine Psalmist , the deeper he has sunk , the more keenly he cries , "out of the depths have I cried ."  Robert Leighton