The prophecy to which these words belong is both brief and obscure. It stands, so to speak, apart and alone, disjoined equally from that which precedes, and from that which follows it. Instead of indulging in fruitless conjecture and speculation, I shall content myself with shortly stating that which alone can with any certainty be gathered out of it; and having done this, shall proceed at once to consider and use it as a call to examine the signs of this present time.
Not long since, on hearing it related that a certain minister was accustomed, in the stated exercises of the sanctuary, to pray for those able to labour hard through the week, but too ill to attend public worship on the Sabbath, our attention was especially directed to this suffering class of our fellow beings; and as the disease is far more prevalent than is generally imagined, and it is thought to be contagious—as whole families usually have it when the head is materially affected—and frightfully dangerous, it seems but an act of humanity to give the alarm.
The trifler hopes that the time will come at last when he shall trifle no more; the inconsiderate and groveling never think they have enough of amusement, or of sensuality, but are still looking for more enjoyment in the paths of folly and vice; the man of rational research is still in expectation of discovering something in a higher degree gratifying to his intellectual capacities and habits; and he who lives by faith feels that he is far from having attained, and therefore presses forward to the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. It is very desirable then, that this restlessness should always be excited by a right cause, and always urge us forward to a right end.
My heart is with you though I am absent, as to my bodily presence from you, and therefore as I have often already, so I have now written to you to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, and to call upon you for your steadfast continuing, and vigorous proceeding in the ways of God. Dear friends and fellow soldiers under Christ, the Captain of our salvation, consider your calling and station, and approve yourselves as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, as men of resolution and courage, be discouraged with no difficulties of your present warfare. As for human affairs, I would have you to be as you are, men of peace: I would have you armed not for resisting, God forbid, but for suffering only, as the Apostle hints: you should resist, even to the uttermost, striving against sin.
The Apostle Paul assures us that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. There seems to be a necessary connection between godliness and persecution. There is an enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In the words of the text, persecution appears to be one of the great tribulations through which they pass. They all suffer persecution in some shape or other.
The providences of God towards his people are most remarkable, and fraught with the most weighty instructions: they are no doubt intended for the benefit of all generations, and preserved in the Scriptures for that purpose. The history of Abraham, the friend of God, and father of the faithful, is most remarkable and interesting. That part of his life and that severe trial of his faith to which the text refers, we have an account from the beginning of this chapter, and in the text, a remembrance is kept of it.
Some of the most noted triumphs of the gospel have been among those that were the despised of this world. God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty. He has chosen the base things. He has chosen things that were not that he might bring to nought things that were, that no flesh might glory in his presence. One such trophy of gospel power and grace lived in the Highlands fifty years ago, and the memory of Angus of the Hills is still fresh among the people of the North Western Islands.
Messages from the Lord are always true and seasonable, whether his words are those of rebuke or those of comfort. In each case too, the authority of the message is divine, and should not therefore be challenged. And the tenor of the messenger’s feelings must be according to the words which he speaks in the name of the Lord to his own generation, which was in a sadly degenerate condition. Its spiritual state, and the kind of message which the Lord gave him to deliver, caused his being distinguished as “the weeping prophet.” In times of backsliding, all who speak in the Lord’s name, and according to His mind, must be like him. The view which they have of the times they live in, and the kind of message which the Lord directs them to deliver combine to make them sad. The woeful condition of things around them casts its dark shadow on their face, and causes the gloomy and austere aspect for which they are condemned by those whom the Lord constrains them to rebuke.
To die to the Lord, we apprehend, is to have a view to the glory of God in all that pertains to our death. It is to consult for God’s glory, in the state of our views and feelings in the prospect of death.
David, from his earlier days, to the close of his long and varied life, was visited with many and painful afflictions. Like Him whom in spirit he called “Lord,” though descended of David after the flesh, he was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. But sanctified affliction produces godly sorrow, and godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation. Of this, David was a most conspicuous and instructive example.
