Lord, if you give us choice to keep our sins and to live in pleasure, or to have them burnt away with trial, we will say to you, Lord, give us the sanctified affliction, but deliver us from all the influences of sin, from every evil habit, from all the accretions of former sin, all the ore that is mixed with the precious metal, everything that diminishes the brightness of your grace in us; everything that keeps you from taking delight in us, take it away, we beseech you.
If this life is to be to your people the crucible and the burning heat, even to a white heat, so let it be, so long as you sit at the furnace mouth, to watch the ore that nothing should be lost. Oh, blessed God, help any of your children that are in the midst of the heat now. Let them see the Lord sitting near and watching, and let them feel perfectly at ease, because in his hands all things must be well.