January 10

For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. - Philippians 1:19.

WHILE the Bible enjoins us to be humble, and forbids every thing like rashness and presumption, it admits of confidence and assurance; and what a recommendation of religion this is! Nothing is so distressing as uncertainty with regard to any very valuable interest, such as the issue of a malady, or the title to an estate, or the success of an enterprise. In what wretchedness must a Christian be who possesses no confidence and certainty with regard to those “things which are unseen and eternal”! But this confidence is attainable. The Christian can gain this confidence and certainty with regard to four things:-First, With regard to the doctrines of the gospel. He may not only have faith unfeigned, but be “strong in faith.” Take a Christian who has been in the ways of God forty or fifty years: he would say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” With regard to many circumstantial things and minor points of doctrine in religion, we may leave the mind open to conviction; here we cannot exercise too much candour; but nothing can be more pernicious than to apply this to the leading truths of Christianity. “It is a good thing for the heart to be established with grace.”

Secondly, We may gain this confidence and certainty with regard to the privileges of the gospel. There is such a thing as enjoying the “comforts of the Holy Ghost,”-as “peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ,” -as relief under a distressed conscience by the application of the “blood of sprinkling.”

Thirdly, We may gain this confidence and certainty with regard to our personal interest in all this, and be able to say, “Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name.” We do not affirm, indeed, that all the subjects of divine grace have this certainty, or we should “break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax.” But if it were not attainable we should not have heard Job saying, “I know that my Redeemer liveth;” nor David, “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory;” nor John, “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.”

Fourthly, We may gain this confidence and certainty with regard to the end and issue of afflictive dispensations. “I know that this shall turn to my salvation;” and this is the very spirit of the motto. Those know who are exercised thereby, that sanctified afflictions may be very useful and subserve the very purpose of their salvation. We allow that there is sometimes a difficulty in gaining this conviction. The providence of God is sometimes very mysterious. Job said, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive him, on the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold him, he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him.” And Jacob said, “All these things are against me;” while at the same time they were subserving his real welfare.

And we can gain this confidence, even now, being assured that though “no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous, yet nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.”