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may derive no sensible advantage from the ordinances of religion: for many of his children, who have been the most diligent in attending upon every external institution, have been compelled to cry, Oh that we knew where we might find him! You may languish under a sense of formality and deadness in duty: for this must have been the case with the Psalmist, when he was obliged to declare that his soul cleaved unto the dust, and entreated to be quickened according to God's word. You may discover no success attending your pious and beneficent undertakings: for can you ever forget who lamented that he had laboured in vain, and had spent his strength for nought, and in vain? You may be subjected to severe and long-continued trials; for what son is he whom his father chasteneth not? But while you continue to follow hard after God, to prefer his favour to your chief joy, and to count all but loss for his sake; however dark and distressing your frames may prove, your state is safe. These are not the feelings of nature. They are not the desires nor longings of the unrenewed mind. They are good gifts which come down from above. They descend from the Father of lights, and are the work of his blessed Spirit. And while they remain deeply seated in your heart, can you believe that God has finally forsaken you? If a man go from home, but leave his family and furniture behind: what is our inference? That his absence is merely temporary, and that he is determined to return. If he had renounced all interest in the place, and resolved to abandon it for ever, he would have carried all along with him, bag and baggage, and not have left a single article of his property upon the premises. And after God long laid siege to your heart, and by the mightiest operations of his marvellous love, succeeded in planting the graces of his Spirit in your souls: whilst these best and dearest pledges of his affection remain, can you persuade yourselves that he has renounced his conquest, and forsaken the work of his hands? If he had cast you off for ever, he would not only have extinguished your religious hope and joy, but also dismantled your soul of its graces and left it under the dreary and desolating power of vice and

depravity. He would not only have concealed from you the smiles of his face, but also have recalled his Holy Spirit. He would not only have stripped you of your comforts, but also have withdrawn every trace of his sanctifying and purifying influence. If his departure had been final, every vestige of humility, contrition, and spirituality, would have been effaced, and your souls abandoned to all that impenetrable and death-like apathy which mark a reprobate mind and hardened heart. As long therefore as you retain any love to his name, any delight in his service, and longing for the enjoyment of his love, as long as you vigilantly exclude Satan and his emissaries, and faithfully reserve the citadel of the heart for the King of heaven: all these facts are endearing and decisive proofs that you belong to the God of glory. They are pledges that, however distant he may now appear, he will speedily return. "For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer."

CHAPTER XI.

ON DISTRESS ARISING FROM TEMPORAL
AFFLICTION.

"God's truth for ever stands secure;
He saves th' oppressed, he feeds the poor;
He sends the lab'ring conscience peace,
And grants the prisoner sweet release."

MAN is born to trouble: and by becoming Christians we are neither exempted from the ordinary calamities of life, nor rendered insensible to their number or severity. We are frequently subjected to sufferings and sorrows of our own, with which no stranger intermeddles: and though God sanctifies our trials, and gives us strength to bear them; still in themselves they are as painful to us as to any of those who are around us. We feel as acutely, as the worldly and the worthless, poverty and reproach, sickness and anguish. We witness with no less emotion than they, the pale countenance, the emaciated frame, and the sinking eye of a dying friend or brother; and follow with a heart as heavy as theirs to the house of silence, and hear with as great a thrill of sadness as they, the clods of the valley rattling on the coffin, which contains the remains of what was lately so lovely and ever must be dear.

As long, however, as your strength is equal to your day, and you are blessed with the Divine presence and support, none of these things can move you. Instead of yielding to despair, you can possess your souls in patience. Amidst the wreck and ruin of your best and most valued earthly comforts, you can lift up your head

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sublime; take a calm and steady view of the darkest and most terrific of the scene, and glory in the deepest and direst tribulation.

But when your distresses are multiplied or prolonged; and that God who, with the light of his countenance and the consolations of his grace, used to cheer and strengthen your heart, is far from helping you and from the words of your roaring: this fills you with perplexity and despondence, and makes you suspect that by your coldness, unkindness, and sinfulness, you have grieved his Holy Spirit, and provoked him to become your adversary. Knowing that godliness has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come, and that God has engaged to keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on him; but finding that your own condition is desolate and dreary, that one comfort after another is wrested from your grasp, and that you are subjected to complicated and lengthened trials: you are ready to question the reality of your past religion, and to fear that you are still without God and without hope.

My suffering friends, you would have great cause indeed to adopt this melancholy conclusion, if you could show that affliction is always sent as a mark of the Divine displeasure, or reserved for the careless and the carnal, or sent as a punishment upon the faithful, without being fitted or designed to produce any valuable or salutary effect.

But is this any thing at all like the representation which the Bible gives us of its nature and design?

Does the Bible,

I. Represent affliction as the effect merely of the Divine displeasure?

Is this the inference that we are to draw from hearing the saints singing of judgment as well as of mercy? from the man being pronounced blessed whom the Lord correcteth and teacheth out of his law? from the declaration of the Psalmist, that it was good for him that he had been afflicted? or from the assurance of our blessed Lord, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten?

Does the Bible,

II. Represent affliction as reserved only for the careless and the carnal?

It is certain that hereafter the wicked shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power; and that in the meantime many of their guilty pleasures are imbittered by remorse and shame, and that multitudes of the transgressors themselves are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest.

But the profane and carnal are not the only sufferers in this world of woe. It is only through much tribulation that any can enter into the kingdom. In the case of some of the dearest of the saints of God, afflictions have come so fast, and lasted so long, that they have had tears for their meat both in the night and day. Will you say that Job, David, Jeremiah, and the Apostles, were sinners above all the men of the ages in which they lived? Yet their trials were singularly numerous and severe: and in general none have received worse treatment than those of whom the world was most unworthy.

The ungodly prosper in the world: they increase in riches: they become old and are great in power: they are not in trouble as other men, neither plagued as other men: for they have their portion in this life. But God has provided some better thing for you. He has called you to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, eternal in the heavens. And in bringing you to glory, one of the measures which he employs, with the most blessed effect, is affliction.

Unless affliction is the lot of the children of God, why are they so frequently exhorted to cultivate patience and resignation? commended for their submission to the Divine will, and their fortitude under trouble? Why are support and consolation provided for them in seasons of suffering and sorrow? and a rich and everlasting recompense promised to them who magnanimously endure their toils and trials? They who shall reign with Christ, are they who now suffer with him. And if you look into heaven, say, Who are these who are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? These are they who come out of

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