April 1

And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua; for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.—Exodus 17:14.

THERE are two things in that record; the victory obtained over Amalek, and the way of obtaining it by incessant prayer: and there are two things to be done to secure this mercy for their use and benefit in future fears, it must be recorded and rehearsed, preserved from oblivion, and seasonably produced for relief.

There are two special assistances given us against fear by experience.

1. Experience greatly abates the terror of sufferings, and makes them less formidable and scaring than otherwise they would be. Fear saith, they are great waters, and will drown us; experience saith, they are much shallower than we think, and are safely fordable; others have and we may pass through the Red Sea, and not be overwhelmed. Fear saith, the pains of death are inconceivable, sharp, and bitter, the living little know what the dying feel; and to lie in a filthy prison in a continual expectation of a cruel death is an insupportable evil: Experience contradicts all these false reports which make our hearts faint, as the second spies did the daunting stories of the first; and assures us prisons and death are not, when we come home to them for Christ, what they seem and appear to be at a distance. O what a good report have those faithful men given, who have searched and tried these things! who have gone down themselves into the valley and shadow of death, and seen what there is in a prison, and in death itself, so long as they were in sight and hearing, able by words or signs to contradict our false notions of it. Oh what a sweet account did Pomponius Algerius give of his filthy prison at Lyons in France! dating all his letters whilst he was there, From the delectable orchard of the Leontine prison; and

9 when carried to Venice, in a letter from the prison there, he writes thus to his Christian friend: "I shall utter that which scarcely any will believe; I have found a nest of honey in the entrails of a lion, a paradise of pleasure in a deep dark dungeon, in a place of sorrow and death, tranquillity of hope and life." Oh! here it is that the Spirit of God and of glory rests upon us.

So blessed Mr. Philpot, our own martyr, in one of his sweet encouraging letters: "Oh how my heart leaps (saith he) that I am so near to eternal bliss! God forgive me my unthankfulness and unworthiness of so great glory. I have so much joy of the reward prepared for me, the most wretched sinner, that though I be in the place of darkness and mourning, yet I can not lament, but am night and day so joyful, as though I were under no cross at all; in all the days of my life I was never so joyful: the name of the Lord be praised."

Others have given the signals agreed upon betwixt them and their friends in the midst of the flames, thereby, to the last, confirming this truth, that God makes the inside of sufferings quite another thing to what the appearance and outside of them is to sense. Thus the experience of others abates the terrors of sufferings to you; and all this is fully confirmed by the personal experience you yourselves have had of the supports and comforts of God, wherein soever you have conscientiously suffered for his sake.

2. And this can not but be a singular assistance to your faith; your own and others' experiences, just like Aaron and Hur, stay up the hands of faith on the one side and the other, that they hang not down, whilst your fears, like those Amalekites, fall before you. For what is experience, but the bringing down of the divine promises to the test of sense and feeling? It is our duty to believe the promises without trial and experiments, but it is easier to do it after so many trials; so that your own and others' experiences, carefully recorded and seasonably applied, would be food to your faith, and a cure to many of your fears in a suffering day.