Sanctified Affliction

"Sanctified affliction teaches the soul its utter destitution. The believer often commences his spiritual journey with shallow and defective views of the perfect fitness and glory of the Redeemer’s justifying righteousness. There is, we admit, a degree of self-renunciation, there is a reception of Christ, and there is some sweet and blessed enjoyment of his acceptance.
Yet, his views of himself, and of the entire, absolute, supreme necessity, importance, and glory of Christ’s finished work, are as nothing compared with his after experience of both.
God will have the righteousness of his Son to be acknowledged and felt to be everything. It is a great work, a glorious work, a finished work, and he will cause his saints to know it. It is his only method of saving sinners; and the sinner that is saved shall acknowledge this, not in his judgment merely; but from a deep heartfelt experience of the truth, ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace.’"

{Octavius Winslow}