Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer; preserve my life from fear of the enemy. [Psalms 64:1]
— Bible
For thou, O God, hast proved us; thou has tried us, as silver is tried. [Psalms 66:10]
— Bible
Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases.
It always looks darkest just before it gets totally black.
Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin. Would you then be fitted for afflictions? Be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside, and then what affliction soever you may meet with will be very easy to you.
There's nothing written in the Bible, Old or New testament, that says, If you believe in Me, you ain't going to have no troubles.
If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that 9 will run into the ditch before they reach you.
The world is full of cactus, but we don't have to sit on it.
When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.
If you have a lemon, make lemonade.
God prepares great men for great tasks by great trials.
The way out of trouble is never as simple as the way in.
All of the troubles that some people have in life is that which they married into.
Nobody ever grew despondent looking for trouble.
A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.
I gather from a lawyer that there was a rehearsal yesterday. We haven't a hope. I know the presiding judge too: I've had the misfortune to sleep with his wife. He was specially picked.
I have always believed that God never gives a cross to bear larger than we can carry. No matter what, he wants us to be happy, not sad. Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't we?
Afflictions are but the shadows of God's wings.
God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty.
There is nothing so consoling as to find one's neighbor's troubles are at least as great as one's own.
I'm trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer.
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.
Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are.
Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.
Affliction is not sent in vain, young man, from that good God, who chastens whom he loves.
Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.
The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you again what you are to presume. I am the judge. I am telling you that. Presume he is innocent. When you sit there, I want you to look and say to yourself, There sits an innocent man.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
He maintained that the case was lost or won by the time the final juror had been sworn in; his summation was set in his mind before the first witness was called. It was all in the orchestration, he claimed: in knowing how and where to pitch each and every particular argument; who to intimidate; who to trust, who to flatter and court; who to challenge; when to underplay and exactly when to let out all the stops.
All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.