Praise in Suffering
by G. Campbell Morgan
"About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God" — Acts 16:25
Paul and Silas were singing praises from the gladness of their hearts in prison. They were exercising their Christian priesthood on its highest level, the priesthood of thanksgiving. Not only that, but the other prisoners were actively listening with pleasure to every word. What was there to make them so glad? "Two were gathered together in the Name and in the midst was the Lord; all unseen by the eyes of sense, unapprehended by any who were round about . . . That Presence was the supreme sense of these men. They did not ask for anything, they gave," writes G. Campbell Morgan. What was the secret of their experience? Morgan continues:
It was the outcome of their knowledge of God. He was known as compelling all things to work together for good to those who love Him. . . . Christianity is never the dour pessimism which submits. Christianity is the cheerful optimism which cooperates with the process, because it sees that through suffering and weakness, joy and triumph must come. That always and only results from a clear vision of God. Whenever this clear vision of God comes to the soul through Christ--through Whom alone it can come--there follows the ending of bondage to all secondary causes. . . Two men were in Philippi, in prison, in the inner prison, in the stocks, in suffering, in sorrow! All true, but the final thing is not said. They were in God! Their supreme consciousness was not that of the prison, or the stocks, or the pain, but of God. . . . They gave Him praises. That is Christianity. . . .
Men who sing while they suffer are men who have learned the profound secret that suffering is the method by which joy is perfected. . . . Suffering is always the method by which joy is perfected. . . . The truth is that all the ultimate joys of the heavenly state are joys that have come out of the agonies of the earthly tribulation. . . . Christianity as an experience is the ability to know that this will be so even while the agony is upon us, and so we are able to sing in the midst of it. Men who sing while they suffer are men who have learned the profound secret that suffering is the method by which joy is perfected in human life and human history.
Men who sing in prison are men who cannot be imprisoned. It was impossible to imprison Paul and Silas. . . Fellowship with God is the franchise of eternity. You may put these men within your stone walls, you may make their feet fast in the wood of your brutal stocks, but they are not there. They are sitting with Christ in the heavenly places. They are ranging themselves with the living ones. They are swinging their censers of their heavenly priesthood in high and holy places. As to bodily presence, they are there in the prison, but as to spiritual essence they are with God. Men who sing in prison are men who cannot be imprisoned.
. . . Men who sing at midnight are citizens of that city of which it is said they need no light of sun or moon, for the Lord and the Lamb are the light of it. . . . Paul and Silas, where are you living just now? In Philippi? No, in the City of God! In the City of God there is no night. These men were children of light. . . Men who sing at midnight are citizens of the city in which there is no night.
. . . Men who sing when their work is stopped are men whose work is never stopped.
. . . A man who can sing in prison is a man whose work is never done. . . .
. . . . That earthquake does not always come. We shall miss a great deal if we imagine that when we are in prison and sing, there will be an earthquake. Prison doors may not be opened at all. Thousands have been left in prison and died there, but they sang, and they sang through until they joined the new song on the other side. That earthquake dos not matter. Do not let us fix our minds upon the earthquake. Probably we shall never have a deliverance like that. . . . Two or three years passed away and Paul was in prison in Rome, and then he wrote to these very people, to this jailer, and these Philippians. Read his letter . . . It is a song from beginning to end. He was still singing, and there was no earthquake. . . . He was the prisoner of Jesus Christ. Then he was in prison again, and he was never coming out, and he knew it. His last writing was the letter of a man in prison never to escape (2 Timothy). He knew it perfectly well (The Westminster Pulpit, Vol. IX, pp. 306-313).
"For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing" (2 timothy 4:6-8).