Page images
PDF
EPUB

their rapid effects, give a poignancy to our recollections here, to which I need not advert.

66

Sufferings for righteousness sake" must not be wholly omitted, though they are now prevented or mitigated as to most of us, by the protection of a Protestant government. Yet some measure of reproach, unkindness, misrepresentation, and calumnies follow every where the sincere Christian, and accomplish the divine declaration, that, "if any man will live godly in Christ Jesus, he shall suffer persecution." And in the case of native converts this opposition is often carried to the extent of serious personal injury.

66

The temptations of Satan, the great spiritual adversary, are also to be noticed; who, sometimes as an angel of light," assumes the garb of extraordinary zeal in order to sow false doctrines; at other times, as the seducing and "old serpent," tempts with external objects addressed to the senses, or by prospects of knowledge and ambition spread before the curiosity; or else," as a roaring lion goeth about, seeking whom he may devour" by open force, cruelty, and injustice, under the cover of his emissaries and servants.

Connected with these are the afflictions arising from concern for the honor of the gospel; when our own interests are comparatively slight, but the honor of God, the great name of the Almighty, the welfare of souls is at stake.

Spiritual and internal sorrows for our own manifold sins and defects form a large addition to these sources of woe; sense of indwelling evil, consciousness of negligence and ignorance, fear of God's indignation, inward displeasure against ourselves, conflict with the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

These various classes of trouble are sometimes accumulated upon us, as in the instances of Jacob, Job, Moses, David; so that we sink "in the depths," and cry out unto the Lord as from the darkness of despair.

At other times, our sorrows are the immediate consequence of some great sin which we have committed against God, when the enemies of religion have occasion given them to blaspheme, and the Lord arises to judgment.

These, then, are the materials of the Divine discipline; and when they continue long, and answers to our prayers seem to be withheld; when the furnace is heated seven times more than is wont; when our natural strength and spirits fail, and our ordinary measure of faith and resignation can sustain the burden no longer; then are we at last compelled to humble ourselves entirely before our God; our fierce wills are subdued; our ears are open to instruction, and the Bible begins to unfold its wonderful truths to our view.

Let us consider then,

II. The instruction from God's Word which afflic tions are the means of communicating, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes."

Doubtless David had learned them in a certain manner before. He knew the law of the Lord, and it was "his meditation all the day." But he had not learned it with so much feeling, he had not entered into its spirit so fully, he had not acquired the knowledge of many portions of it so adequately as when by affliction he was prepared for the lesson. He then understood God's statutes in another manner. He made them more constantly "the men of his council." They became his " song in the house of his pilgrimage." So that he could say, "blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law."

A general principle is here involved. Afflictions are the interpreter of Holy Scripture. God has written a book, and he sends trouble to make men

understand it aright. The Holy Spirit, the great interior teacher, makes use of afflictions to prepare men's hearts generally for the class of instructions the Bible conveys; and then to interpret to them the contents of the revelation.

They are the means of preparing men's hearts for studying the Scriptures, in various ways, by disposing them aright towards the general scope of redemption. For the Bible is a discovery of stupendous mercy to man; it proposes the infinite love of God in the sacrifice of Christ; it calls men on the footing of this, to repent and turn from all their sins; it sets forth a holy, spiritual, elevated rule of Christian obedience; it demands the sacrifice of the love of the world; it bids us to pray, to keep holy the Sabbath, to love our neighbor as ourselves. And it offers us, for these purposes, the grace of the blessed Spirit. Now, what preparation has a man for all this sort of reading, when he is in health, prosperity and carelessness? What can he understand of it? But let sorrows come, and he is presently, by God's grace, induced, disposed, brought to a right position for understanding the main purport of revelation.

Affliction, again, is the means of infusing that docility and lowliness of heart, that childlike temper, that spirit of prayer for divine illumination, by which all the subsequent lessons of Christianity are duly learned. "With the lowly is wisdom."

In like manner, earnestness in the pursuit of the heavenly doctrine is a fruit which the Holy Spirit teaches us to bear in times of trouble. The soul is then awakened; eternity is brought near; impending death fills the whole view; the glare of the world is extinguished; religion assumes an importance and reality which before was never felt. And now attention that wonderful exercise of the intellectual powers, to which moral philosophers attribute so much of the impression of truth-is fully

U

roused to the lessons of the Bible; every word is remembered, weighed, meditated upon. The association of ideas are now turned towards the new subject. Instead of every thing being forgotten as soon as heard; instead of the man of the world in his haughtiness giving up the pursuit of salvation almost before it was begun, he is now prepared for seeking first the kingdom of God and his righte

66

ousness.

Then the relative importance of different classes of truth as they lie in the Bible, is seized at once by the afflicted and aroused heart. The Holy Scriptures are a wonderful revelation, written at sundry times and divers manners, and conveyed to us in human language; assuming now the form of history and now of prophecy; conveying truth at one time in lives of patriarchs and kings; and at another in the blessed narrative of our Savior's doctrine; here in Psalms, and there in divine Epistles. Of course, a great deal of the matters of criticism, of history, of chronology, of manners and customs, and of maxims of prudence in the conduct of life, and details of moral precept are connected with the stupendous mysteries of redemption and its vital principles and consequences. All these have their places, and are important in a certain measure, for certain persons, and at certain times. Multitudes however who read the Bible in prosperity and whole-heartedness, never go beyond them; they stop in the mere surface and appendages of truth. They omit those grand features of the way of salvation, which instantly strike the sorrowful and earnest student. Affliction prepares him for the capital points which can alone relieve his conscience and console his heart. Other matters he learns afterwards, if life and opportunity are granted; but what he learns first and prominently, is what affliction has softened his mind to require. Further, sorrows prepare the heart for submitting

to the divine authority of Holy Scripture as the inspired record, written under the plenary guidance of the blessed Spirit. Man in a state of ease and of comparative carelessness about salvation, can never read the Bible with that reverence for the words of the living God, and entire prostration of soul before his authoritative will, which the broken-hearted, afflicted student instantly feels. Objections, theories, traditions of men, the fancies of his own mind pervert the worldly reader. He takes what portion of the Bible he likes, and tacitly rejects the rest. Not so the lowly, distressed Christian. He bows to his Bible as the unerring dictate of the Holy Ghost.

Lastly; affliction disposes the mind to the due use of those means which God has vouchsafed for the explication of his Holy Word-prayer for enlightening grace; diligent attendance on the public worship of God, where large portions of it are read and explained; comparison of brief and difficult passages with longer and more obvious ones; the comments of learned and pious writers; the use of matters plain and practical at once, whilst he patiently waits for light upon more mysterious ones.

2. But besides this work of affliction, as preparatory to the understanding of God's statutes, there is a work also of interpretation as to the chief matters of revelation themselves.

The doctrine of repentance for sin, who fully understands but the contrite in heart, the afflicted, the

powerless mourner? It is " godly sorrow which worketh" the right apprehension and knowledge, as well as the grace itself, of "repentance unto salvation, not to be repented of." Cases do occur where penitence is wrought under other circumstances; but ordinarily it is affliction, like the prodigal's "famine and husks," which are the means of his "coming to himself" and arising to return to his father. Slight

« PreviousContinue »