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CHAPTER V.

CONFIDENCE IN GOD.

PERHAPS, as I have already supposed, in addition to the deep affliction of your being left a widow, you are left also in circumstances every way calculated to aggravate this already heavy woe. To lose your husband is of itself a cup of sorrow requiring nothing to fill it to overflowing, and embitter it with wormwood, except to have a young dependent family, and no provision for their support, or their settlement in the world. O! fo that woman to be plunged into all the anxieties of business, all the fear of destitution, who never knew a care. or tasted of solicitude; for such an one, unskilled in trade, unused to labour, to have own maintenance and that of her children to carn! To sit day after day, amidst her little fatherless circle, and witness their unconsciousness of their loss; to hear them ask why she weeps; to have her heart lacerated by questions about their father; to sit in silent solitary grief when their voices are all hushed at night, except that which issues from the cradle; to be followed to a sleepless pillow, and to be kept waking

through the live-long night, by recollections of de parted joys, and fears of future want! Ah my afflicted friend, I pity you. May God support and comfort you.

Permit me to whisper in your ear, and direct to your troubled spirit, the passage I have already quoted, "LET THY WIDOWS TRUST IN ME; for a judge of the fatherless and the widow is God in his holy habitation." Do consider who it is that says this. It is the omnipotent, all-sufficient God. It is he who has afflicted you, who says this. He authorises, he invites, he enjoins your confidence. But what do I mean by confidence? An expectation that he will provide for you: an expectation, which if it does not bring you to strong consolation, is sufficient, at any rate, to controul the violence of your grief, to check the hopelessness of your sorrows, and save you from despair: an expectation which shall prevent all your energies from being paralysed, and keep you from sitting down amidst your little helpless family, and abandoning all for lost; an expectation which leads you to say, "I do not see how or whence help is to come, but I believe it will come. I am utterly at a loss to conceive how I shall be able to work my way, or provide for these fatherless children, but God has encouraged me to confide in him, and he is omnipotent. I know not whence to look for friends, but the hearts of all men are in his hands, and he can turn some towards me in acts of kindness." This is confidence;

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his is trust in God. Is it necessary for me here to mention the grounds of trust? They are at hand in great number and force.

1. Dwell upon the innumerable exhortations to this duty, as appertaining to all states of sorrow and difficulty, which are to be found in the Word of God. Scarcely one word occurs more frequently in the Old Testament than the word, "TRUST; nor one in the New, more frequently than "FAITH," They stand intimately related for indeed, if not identical in meaning, they are nearly so. of providence means faith in Christ, means trust in him.

Trust in the God him; and faith in How sweetly does

one sacred writer after another catch up the word “TRUST,” and roll it in innumerable echoes along the whole line of revelation. How repeatedly does the sound come from the lips of God himself "TRUST" in me. How often do we hear the troubled and destitute saint reply, "In thee do I put my trust." How often do the inspired penmen, after disclosing the glories of the divine character, and the infinite attributes of Jehovah, finish their description by such an admonition as this, "Put your trust in the Lord.' Dwell on the power of God, and cannot he sustain you and your children? In casting yourselves on his boundless sufficiency, his infinite and inexhaustible resources, you do not obtrude or presume upon him; he invites, yea, commands your confidence. You do not lay down your burden on his arm unauthorised; he stretches out his arm and says,

"Roll thy burden here, and I will sustain it. He asks, he promises to take care of you. Trust him then. But you have nothing, you think, but his bare promise. Not a friend to whom you can look; not an index to point out in what way even his assistance is to come. Then you have the more need, and I was almost going to add, more warrant to trust him. Then is the time for faith in God's word, when you have nothing to look for from man: then is the time to trust in the promise, when you have nothing else but the promise to trust to. It is not possible to conceive of one act of the human mind that more honours God, or more pleases him, than that simple trust which is exercised in the absence of every thing else, as a ground of confidence, but the word of God. A widow, with a little circle of dependent children, with no present provision, and no assured prospect of provision, who yet exercises confidence in God, and believes she shall in some way or other be taken care of, is in a state of mind; certainly, as acceptable to God, as any in which a human being can be found, and perhaps

even more so.

2. Meditate much upon the special promises and gracious intimations which are made to your own particular and afflictive case. Go over the passages which I have already quoted: turn back to them again: read them repeatedly, till you are enabled 'to feel their full force. They are God's own words to widows: the language of the divine infinite Com

forter, to the most afflicted class in all the school of sorrow; and ought they not to be received as such, with all the faith and trust that are due to an infallible being? Can he have invited the widow's saddened heart to words of consolation, only to mock its sadness? Can he have attracted her confidence by language specially addressed to her, only to leave her forsaken and abandoned? This would not be human mercy, much less divine. Difficult, then, as it may be, and must be, amidst broken cisterns, failing springs, exhausted resources, and with no prospect, or even indication, big as a man's hand of the coming blessing on the distant horizon, to trust in God, endeavour, dejected woman, to do so. Like Hagar in the wilderness, you may be near the deliverer, when you know it not. An invisible comforter is near, and the provider may be coming, though unseen. Trust, O trust, and be not afraid. Endeavour to hush thy fears to rest, under the music and the charm of that one word, "Trust in the Lord, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."

3. Another encouragement to trust, is the testimony of those who have observed the ways of Providence, and the care which it has exercised over widows. It has grown into a kind of current adage, "That whomsoever may seem to be overlooked by Providence, God takes especial care of widows and orphans." Who has not heard this expression, and who has not seen its verification in instances that have come under his own observation? Who could

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