75 Sermon Illustrations on Affliction

History informs us, that a father went to the agents of a tyrant to endeavor to redeem his two sons, military men, who, with some other captives of war, were appointed to die. He offered as a ransom to surrender his own life and a large sum of money. The soldiers who had it in charge to put them to death, informed him that this equivalent would be accepted for one of his sons, and for one only, because they should be accountable for the execution of two persons: he might therefore choose which he would redeem. Anxious to save even one of them, thus, at the expense of his own life, he yet was utterly unable to decide which should die, and

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# 13. Benefits of Affliction.

While the eminent Puritan minister, Mr. Dod, resided at Hanwell, (Eng.) he was the subject of much persecution and sorrow. Going once to see his relative, the Rev. Mr. Greenham, of Dry-Drayton, and lamenting the state of his mind to him, the worthy minister replied, "Son, son, when affliction lieth heavy, sin lieth light." This saying conveyed great comfort to Mr. Dod, who rejoiced that God could make affliction the means of his sanctification; and used afterwards to say, that, "sanctified afflictions are spiritual promotions."

A young man, who had been long confined with a diseased limb, and was near his dissolution, was attended by a friend, who requested that the wound might be uncovered. When this was done, "There," said the young man, "there it is, and a precious treasure it has been to me; it saved me from the folly and vanity of youth; it made me cleave to God as my only portion, and to eternal glory as my only hope: and I think it has now brought me very near to my Father's house."

A New England divine, who was preaching on the benefit derived from affliction, said: I once knew a young man, who was a student in one of our universities, who, by reading Dr. Combe's works and others, had become very skeptical on some important points—the doctrine of prayer, total depravity, regeneration, and the special influences of the Holy Spirit. Though he professed religion and was studying for the ministry, he had lost all religious enjoyment, and was fast going down an inclined plane into the abyss of infidelity. During a vacation in midwinter, he was travelling on business among the Germans in the interior of Pennsylvania, when he was prostrated on his bed with a dangerous disease—hundreds of miles from home, "a stranger in a strange land." When he began to think of dying, he found himself all unprepared. His new sentiments hovered like dismal clouds around his sick-bed, that not a star of hope shone through. There was little time for logic then: but one species of short-hand logic swept away his skeptical notions like chaff. He reasoned from effect to cause. "Embracing these new sentiments has evidently brought my mind into this wretched condition; and as the fruit is bad, the tree must be bad also. 'He that followeth me,' says Christ, 'shall not walk in darkness;' therefore, as I am walking in darkness, it must be because I have been led astray from him. These new opinions must, therefore, be erroneous, and I will renounce them forever, embrace, in all humility and simplicity, the truths of the Gospel, as I embraced them at the first." Right speedily did he put his resolve into action; and he soon found his way back to the fold of Christ, to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls. He recovered from his sickness and returned home, rejoicing to tell his friends what God had done for his soul. And that young man, my hearers, is preaching to you to-day! I have many blessings for which to thank God, for He has shown my way with the gifts of His providence; but for the blessing of that afflicting illness, I sometimes feel as if I ought to praise and thank Him most. And if I am ever so happy as to get home to heaven, I know I shall remember that affliction with gratitude still! It will be a theme on which I shall love to linger, one which shall prompt many anthems of my rejoicing there.

A merchant was one day returning from market. He was on horseback, and behind him was a valise filled with money. The rain fell with violence, and the good old man was wet to his skin. At this he was vexed, and murmured because God had given him such bad weather for his journey.

He soon reached the borders of a thick forest. What was his terror on beholding on one side of the road a robber, with levelled gun, aiming at him and attempting to fire! But the powder being wet by the rain, the gun did not go off, and the merchant, giving spurs to his horse, fortunately had time to escape.

As soon as he found himself safe, he said to himself: "How wrong was I, not to endure the rain patiently as sen. by Providence. If the weather had been dry and fair, I should not, probably, have been alive at this hour, and my little children would have expected my return in vain. The rain which caused me to murmur, came at a fortunate moment, to save my life and preserve my property." And thus it is with a multitude of our afflictions; by causing us slight and short sufferings, they preserve us from others far greater, and of longer duration.

A minister was recovering of a dangerous illness, when one of his friends addressed him thus: "Sir, though God seems to be bringing you up from the gates of death, yet it will be a long time before you will sufficiently retrieve your strength, and regain vigor enough of mind to preach as usual." The good man answered:— "You are mistaken, my friend; for this six weeks' illness has taught me more divinity than all my past studies and all my ten years' ministry put together."

A few years since, says a writer in the Pastor's Journal, I was engaged in a wholesale mercantile business in the city of New-York; but ill health and other circumstances compelled me to close it and remove to the country. My young men were most of them from pious families; some were warm-hearted Christians, and all of them succeeded in finding eligible situations but one. S. was my youngest clerk; his talents were respectable; his conduct, as far as I could judge, was irreproachable; but my best efforts, and those of his friends, could not secure him a situation. After months spent in vain endeavors to find an opening in the business of his choice, and a year occupied on a foreign voyage without success, he returned to the country and engaged reluctantly in a mechanical business, which his father followed, near the place where I had settled. I saw him but seldom; but when I met him as his friend, I was treated with marked coldness. I was at a loss to account for it, and at length demanded an explanation, when I found the whole family considered me culpably to blame in not procuring him a situation in New-York, after I had no longer occasion for his services. It was indeed a mystery even to myself, that the path to manhood chosen by S. and his friends, should be so hedged up as to compel him to walk in another. S. however continued his mechanical pursuits, and, in the providence of God, was directed to the neighborhood of a protracted meeting. He was the child of many prayers, and had more than once lived through an awakening unchanged, though not unaffected. He was now drawn, by an impulse he could not resist, to attend this meeting, feeling that it might be the last strivings of the Spirit. With trembling he took his place on the anxious seat, and, overwhelmed with emotion, he retired from the meeting to a field, where he gave himself away to his Savior, and the Spirit spake peace to his soul. It was but a few days after this happy event, S. returned to our village, (where his parents still reside,) and the humble, meek, and gentle air which his manly countenance had assumed, in place of the haughty, discontented form, was apparent to every one. I was confined to my house by indisposition, and was delighted to welcome him who had scarcely entered my dwelling since his return from the city. He modestly gave me an account of the change in his feelings and happiness, in presence of some members of my family, and solicited a private interview. On retiring with him, he said to me, with tears in his eyes: "My mind has been sorely troubled by the recollection of some things I did in your store. I was tempted to take sundry small articles, for my own use, without your knowledge or consent, amounting, I should think, to five dollars, and I cannot rest until I have paid you for them!" A crowd of reflections rushed into my mind. I felt overwhelmed for a moment with a sense of the goodness of God, in so counteracting all his plans as to save him from the vortex which was opening before him. He had begun to rob his employer, and, as the progress in vice is rapid downward, had not a kind Providence interposed, S. would, in all probability, have become, ere this, a tenant of the state prison, and brought down the gray hairs of his parents with sorrow to the grave. I pointed out to him, as I trust, faithfully and profitably, the finger of God in his rescue, and encouraged him to persevere unto the end. It is now nearly two years since this interview, and S. has continued to give evidence of the sincerity of the change, and bids fair to become an ornament to society and a pillar in the church of Christ.

# 14. Gratitude for Affliction.

Mary had learned to read, and at an early age took great delight in her Bible; but before she was eighteen years old, her sight began to fail her, and in a very short time she became totally blind. This, it will be thought, must have been a severe trial, at such an age, under any circumstances, but more especially to one who had always derived her chief pleasure and enjoyment from her little stock of books. Mary, however, had learned from her Bible, that "God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men;" and she felt assured that he would, in some way or other, make this affliction tend to her eternal good. "Many people pity me," she said one day, to a lady who was talking with her, "and say, it is hard to be blind; but I don't think it at all hard. Perhaps, if I had not lost my sight, I should have grown proud. I was very fond of reading, and I should perhaps have thought too much of knowledge; I might have been puffed up, and therefore the temptation was mercifully taken from me. The Lord knew that I needed some trial, and he chose this for me. I am glad he did, for I should not have known what to have chosen for myself; I am sure I should not have chosen this. What, he blind! No; for then I should not be able to read, or to go about. I should not have chosen any thing that was painful. I sometimes think," she continued, "how many trials this keeps me from, which I should not have known how to bear!"

In the last will and testament of this eminent reformer occurs the following remarkable passage:—"Lord God, I thank thee, that thou hast been pleased to make me a poor and indigent man upon earth. I have neither house, nor land, nor money, to leave behind me. Thou hast given me wife and children, whom I now restore to thee. Lord, nourish, teach, and preserve them, as thou hast me."

A negro named Robert, a sugar-boiler, was dreadfully afflicted for several years; his affliction arose, as was supposed, from a drop of boiling sugar falling on his arm when he was at work. The place broke out, and the sore spread, so that his fingers fell off. The disorder ascended into his head, and his eyes fell out, as also pieces of

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"When I visited a country neighbor of mine" (says Lord Clarendon) "in the morning, I always found him in bed; and when I came in the afternoon, he was asleep, and to most men besides myself, access was denied. Once walking with him, I doubted he was melancholy, and, by spending his time so much in bed, and so much alone, that there was something that troubled him otherwise that it could not be that a man upon whom God had poured so many blessings should be so little contented as he appeared to be. To which he answered, 'that he thought himself the most happy man alive in a wife who was all the comfort he could have in this world; that he was at so much ease in his fortune, he did not wish it greater; but he said he would deal freely with me, and tell me, if he were melancholy, (which he suspected himself of,) what was the true cause of it; that he had somewhat he knew not what to do with; he knew not how to spend his time; which was the reason he loved his bed so much, and slept at other times, which he said he found did him already no good in his health.'" Lord Clarendon adds, that the unhappy gentleman's melancholy daily increased with the agony of his thoughts, till he contracted diseases which carried him off at the age of thirty-six.

The Rev. H. Venn once told his children, that he would take them to see one of the most interesting sights in the world. He would not tell them what it was; but in the evening led them to a miserable hovel, whose ruinous walls and broken windows showed an extreme degree of poverty and want. "Now," said he, "my dear children, can any one that lives in such a wretched habitation as this be happy? Yet this is not all; a poor young man lies there on a miserable straw bed, dying of disease, 374. 375

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at the age of nineteen, consumed with fever, and afflicted with nine painful ulcers." "How wretched!" they all exclaimed. He then led them into the cottage, and addressing the poor dying young man, said, "Abraham Midwood, I have brought my children here to show them that it is possible to be happy in a state of disease, and poverty, and want: now, tell them if it is not so." The dying youth, with a sweet smile, replied, "Oh! yes, sir; I would not change my state with that of the richest person on earth, who has not those views which I have. Blessed be God! I have a good hope, through Christ, of being admitted into those blessed regions where Lazarus now dwells, having long forgotten all his sorrows and miseries. Sir, this is nothing to bear whilst the presence of God cheers my soul, and whilst I can have access to him, by constant prayer, through faith in Jesus. Indeed, sir, I am truly happy, and I trust to be happy through eternity; and I every hour thank God, who has brought me from a state of darkness into marvelous light, and has given me to enjoy the unsearchable riches of his grace."

The ermine chooses to die rather than defile her beautiful skin. There is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction: affliction is but like a rent in a coat; sin, a prick at the heart. In affliction, there is some good; in this lion, there is some honey to be found. St. Augustine saith, "Affliction is God's flail to thresh off our husks; not to consume, but refine." There is no good in sin: it is the spirit and quintessence of evil. Sin is worse than hell; for the pains of hell only are a burden to the creature; but sin is a burden to God. T. Watson.