1 Kings 19:10 And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant… This was the darkest hour in the prophet's history, and this a sad revelation of the weakness to be found in a character possessing so many elements of strength. There are two truths we propose to illustrate here. I. THE BLESSEDNESS OF HUMAN SYMPATHY. God has not designed that we should live alone. He gathers men into families. He collects His people into churches that they may afford mutual help, take their respective parts in a common work, and together share a common reward. He requires that we all be as links in this grand chain of love, adding some strength to it, and yet receiving strength from it in our turn. II. THE LIMITS OF HUMAN SYMPATHY. Though its power to aid and comfort be great, there are bounds to its influence. It is only within a certain range, and that range comparatively narrow, that it can carry on its ministry of love. There is a vast region of spiritual experiences, some bright and joyous, but more of the sad and sombre character, closely fenced against it by barriers which it can never pass. Emphatically is it true that there is a bitterness which each heart must taste for Itself, and that it has joys with which no stranger can intermeddle. 1. More particularly, we observe life's most serious perplexities must generally be solved by ourselves. 2. Again, life's severest conflicts must be fought by ourselves. Another man's temptations are not mine — another man's doubts are not mine — another man's perplexities are. not mine — and therefore independently I must stand and struggle. 3. So with the heaviest sorrows we have to endure. They are those which no friend, however beloved, can fully understand or share. 4. So in some of life's greatest works, we have to stand alone. The world has always been slow to recognise her best benefactors, and even the men who by their discoveries in science have contributed most to the advance of civilisation and the increase of wealth, have generally had a solitary and toilsome, often a dangerous path to tread, their teachings distrusted, their aims described as utopian, themselves despised as foolish visionaries. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. |
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