November 13

"As an eagle stirreth up her nest." Deuteronomy 32:11.

She sees the eaglets nestling, blinking, and dozing; and she wishes them to fly. Arise, says she; but they refuse. She then stirs up the nest, shakes it; turns out the inside; separates, scatters the parts. That is, she either destroys the nest, or makes it so uncomfortable that the young ones move out upon the neighboring boughs, where they are in a posture for flight. God does the same with us: he stirs up our nest.

First, as to our outward condition in the world. This was the case with the Jews. Egypt had been their abode, where, in the infancy of their state, they were lodged like birds in a nest; and though it was an impure one, and much straitened and confined them, they evinced no care to leave it. And it is easy to see, that if they had been well treated, and enjoyed the smiles of the government and the former advantages of Goshen, Moses might have called long enough before they would have come out. But there arose another king, that knew not Joseph, who evil entreated them, and made their lives bitter by reason of cruel bondage. Their burdens were intolerable; their tasks impracticable; their complaints were turned into insults; their daughters were for slaves, and their sons for slaughter: and now they sigh for deliverance, and are willing to go forth, even into a wilderness, at the divine call. Thus God stirred up their nest. Manasseh was the son of good Hezekiah; but every pious principle of his education had been corrupted by power, wealth, and pleasure. He became proverbial for wickedness, and would have gone on till he had filled up the measure of his iniquity, but God stirred up his nest. "When he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him; and he was entreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord he was God." What brought the prodigal to his senses, and made him think of home? A mighty famine in the land—he began to be in want. How many now living can say, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted: before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word." You had health; but sickness invaded your frame, and you have been made to possess months of vanity, and have had wearisome nights appointed for you. You prospered in business; but your purposes were broken off, your schemes failed; you were put back in life, and compelled to begin the world afresh. You had a wife of your bosom; but the Lord took away the desire of your eyes with a stroke. You had a favorite child, on whom you placed many a flattering expectation; but at an early grave you sighed, "Thou destroyest the hope of man;" and now, at your meals, you see David's seat is empty, and you often retire, and sigh, "Childhood and youth are vanity." And what is all this but his stirring up your nest, and by a sad, but salutary necessity, constraining you to turn from time to eternity, from the creature to himself, the supreme good? And what a mercy if you can now say,

"Now to the shining realms above I stretch my hands and glance mine eyes; Oh for the plaions of a dove. To bear me to the upper skies.

There, from the bosom of my God, Oceans of endless pleasure roll; There would I fix my last abode, And drown the sorrows of the soul."

Secondly, as to our self-righteous confidence and security. We have naturally a good opinion of ourselves, and the enemy of souls loves to cherish it. He therefore keeps his palace and his goods in peace. He dreads a stir in the conscience. He knows that we must be humbled before we are exalted, wounded before we can be healed, and be emptied of self before we can be filled with all the fulness of God. This state of mind must therefore be disturbed and destroyed before any thing like genuine religion can commence. And what does God? By the conviction of sin, like a general at the head of an army, he enters the soul; and the man no more says, Peace, peace: his hopes are fled; he is reduced to self-despair, and his only cry is, "What must I do to be saved?" His worldly friends are alarmed for him, but they who know what is the way of the Spirit rejoice, not that he is made sorry, but that he now sorrows after a godly sort. And the subject of the change himself may mistake the nature and design of the operation, and conclude that he is going to be destroyed. But if the Lord had a mind to kill him, he would not have showed him such things as these. Thus it was with Paul. See how his nest was feathered with self-righteousness, and see how it was stirred up: "I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God."

Thirdly, as to our departure from life. We are not to remain here always, and it is no little difficulty to break up our attachment to the present state, and to make us willing to leave it. But see how this is done. After a number of years we have a feeling persuasion that this is not our rest; that creatures are broken reeds; that the earth is a vale of tears; that the world is vanity and vexation of spirit; and having looked through every scene here, we wish for another and a nobler region of existence. Then, too, our powers begin to fail us. Pains and infirmities grow upon us. Our decaying senses shut us out by degrees from former objects and pursuits. The days are come wherein we have no pleasure. Hearing fails. They that look out of the window are darkened. Fear is in the way. The grasshopper is a burden. And when we look around, where now are the relations and friends that once rendered life delightful? Lover and friend God has put far from us, and our acquaintance into darkness. We seem more and better related to another world than this. We feel the drawings of those who are gone. "What have I here, and what do I here?" And now the hope of usefulness ceases to detain us. How can I glorify God, or serve my generation? Why should I remain a cumberer of the ground, when so many fine and fruitful trees are cut down? And now we become better acquainted with the heavenly world we have more nearly approached. O what darkness here, and what sunshine there;

what bondage here, and what liberty there! There no law in the members warring against the law of the mind. There no complaint, when I would do good evil is present with me. Is not this worth dying for? Then the earnest and foretastes of the glory to which we are going render every thing else comparatively insipid, and the grapes of Esheol make us long for the vineyards of Canaan. And thus the Lord stirs up the nest of life itself, and gets the heir of immortality upon the perch for his departure, where he is able to say,

"There is a house not made with hands, Eternal and on high; And here my spirit, waiting, stands Till God shall bid it fly."