Spurgeon on Suffering

The following is from Piper's talk on Charles Spurgeon from the 1995 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. Spurgeon's words are indented as quotations. Piper's comments start at the far left. My words are in brackets.

[Spurgeon says this about suffering:]

"It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity" (see note 51).

[Piper comments:]

This is exactly the opposite strategy of modern thought, even much evangelical thought, that recoils from the implications of infinity. If God is God he not only knows what is coming, but he knows it because he designs it. For Spurgeon this view of God was not first argument for debate, it was a means of survival.
Our afflictions are the health regimen of an infinitely wise Physician. He told his students,

"I dare say the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness ... If some men, that I know of could only be favoured with a month of rheumatism, it would, by God's grace mellow them marvelously" (see note 52).

51. "The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon," p. 25.
52. An All Round Ministry, p. 384.