July 2

This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me. - Psalms 119:50.

OBSERVE the season here referred to-days of affliction. Who is free from affliction? “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” and Christians experience trials in common with others. Moses chose to “suffer affliction with the people of God.” One is saying, “My purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart;” another is bereaved of his connections, and is saying, “Lovers and friends hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” The eye of another rests upon the shadow of death, and under the influence of a noxious disease is saying, “I shall behold men no more with the inhabitants of the earth.”

Observe, then, a source of comfort, “This is my comfort,” “Thy word hath quickened me.” In the season of affliction what is so precious to the suffering Christian as the word of God? “Unless,” says David, an old and a great sufferer, “unless thy law had been my delight, I should have perished in my affliction.” The Scripture is never so precious as it is in the hour of trouble, and many have been there, and many are still there. This blessed book says, as its Author did, “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace.” Its “exceeding great and precious promises” minister to our consolation and support. They bid us to be of good courage, and not yield to fear, assuring us that “as our day so shall our strength be.” The “word” assures us that nothing occurs by chance, that all are the acts of heavenly arrangement-the arrangement of our Father and our Friend-that all will be well, for that all is well now, and that all our woes and all our mercies tend to promote our real, Spiritual, and eternal welfare-“that all things work together for good to them that love God.” “O,” said Bolingbroke, under his affliction, “my philosophy forsakes me in my affliction.” But did Sir Philip Sidney’s philosophy forsake him, when, after a battle, he, having to undergo a dreadful operation, said to the surgeon, “Sir, you are come to a poor timid creature in himself, but to one who by the grace of God is raised above his own weakness, and therefore do not dishonour your art in sparing the patient.” Nor did the philosophy of the church forsake her when she said, “Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

There are persons that the Scriptures must comfort, or nothing can do; and yet, such is the cruelty of infidels, that they would rob these sufferers of their only comfort. The afflicted man goes to the house of God, and there finds God in his afflictions to be a refuge; and these wretches would pull down that refuge and leave him without an asylum, and his poor head bare to the pitiless storm. The widow begins to hope when she reads, “Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them; and let thy widows trust in me.” The wretched infidel comes and dashes away this only cup of consolation from her parched lips. We should never give countenance to them, but rather consider them as robbers and murderers of the worst kind.

“Should all the forms which men devise

Assault my faith with treacherous art,

I’d call them vanity and lies,

And bind the gospel to my heart.”