II. GOD SENDS AFFLICTIONS UPON MEN FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR INFLUENCE AS THEY BEAR UPON THE PASSIONS AND PURPOSES OF LIFE.

1. Amid the prosperities of life, when pains, disappointments, and distress are strangers, pride is very apt to be strong and influential. The miseries of this life are sent to repress this pride. They rebuke it. They check it. They stand in its way and hinder its influences. Pain and pride do not thrive well together. Far from it. There is little manifest arrogance and haughtiness, or even ambition, on Caesar's bed of sickness. When amid the burnings of his fever he cries: "Give me some drink, Titanius," like a sick girl, he is a very different man and different example from what he was at the head of his legions, his strong hand upon his sword. He cares very little now for his eagles — very little for glory.

2. These afflictions of life also repress worldliness of spirit. What a lecture a fever gives to it! or a funeral! What a lesson the graveyard reads in its ears! What a rebuke when the man bears to the tomb the son for whom he thought he was hoarding his thousands!

3. These miseries, too, have an influence upon disappointed ambition, envy, and such like. They are seen to be impartial.

4. Our miseries, too, affect our purposes. Indeed there are very few of our lost purposes that are formed without them.

5. Our afflictions tend strangely to impress us with a sense of our dependence on God.

III. THE AFFLICTIONS EXPERIENCED BY THE PEOPLE OF GOD FURNISH OPPORTUNITY AND MEANS FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE HIGHEST AND MOST DIFFICULT VIRTUES. If there were no instances of distress, we should have nothing to excite our pity. If there were no instances of want, there would be nothing to call forth our charity. If nobody injured or offended us, we should have nobody to forgive. Aside from something to distress or annoy us, the virtue of patience would not be called into action and cultivated. Our fortitude, if not much of our faith, could never be exercised at all, if there were no burdens to bear, no distresses to endure, no furnaces of trial to burn upon us.

IV. HOW COULD YOU, THEN, JUDGE WHETHER YOU WERE A CHILD OF GOD OR NOT? The temper we have and the demeanour we exhibit in afflictions, and toward the afflicted, constitute more just criterions of our character than any other. If there were no afflictions here, we should have no "good Samaritan" to copy, and no priest and Levite, whose irreligious example to shun. God may have sent us trials and filled His world with sorrows, not willingly, but to furnish us opportunity to test our faith and find whether we are on the way to heaven.

V. AFFLICTIONS MAKE DEMONSTRATIONS OF MEN, PROOFS, EXHIBITS TO THE WORLD, OF THE POWER AND DIVINITY OF FAITH. The world needs such demonstrations. The wicked are not to be convinced by principles merely. In trial grace brightens — it shines — it demonstrates. For this reason God sends trials.

VI. IT IS JUST IN TIMES AND BY MEANS OF AFFLICTIONS, THAT GOD BESTOWS UPON YOU HIS MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS.

(I. S. Spencer, D. D.)

1. From the infinite benevolence of His nature, and the mercy that characterises all His dispensations.

2. From the fewness of our afflictions compared with our deserts.

3. From the large aggregate of happiness which we all enjoy.

4. From the fact that many of our sorrows are self-originated.

5. From the direct statements of the written revelation.

II. THE DESIGN FOR WHICH THEY ARE SENT. Their ordinary uses are —

1. To discipline character. "This is all the fruit, to take away sin." While we are under affliction, we are under a process of cure.

2. To prove principle. It does this to ourselves and to others.

3. To increase usefulness. Who visits the sick? Chiefly those who have suffered affliction.

4. To detach from the vanities of earth, and prepare the soul for heaven.

III. THE ALLEVIATIONS BY WHICH THEY ARE ACCOMPANIED.

1. In the appointment of them you are privileged to discern and acknowledge the Divine hand.

2. In the endurance of them you are often favoured with peculiar supports and consolations.

3. In the final review you will assuredly have occasion to bless God for all.

IV. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THEY SHOULD BE MET.

1. An inquiring spirit. "Show me wherefore thou contendest with me." Inquire into their causes, their tendency, and especially the influence which they exert upon your character.

2. A prayerful spirit. There is no time more favourable for the exercises of devotion, no time in which we are more likely to obtain the richest blessings, than the time of affliction. This is eminently a time in which God may be found.

3. A submissive spirit.

4. A thankful spirit.

5. A spirit of cheerful expectation and hope of better days hereafter.

(S. Thodey.)

1. You were created happy, by your own faults you became miserable; your Creator, notwithstanding, redeemed you from this state; and the only penance for your guilt is a mixture of misery with happiness, in that short interval which passes between the cradle and the grave.

2. Those sufferings to which we are exposed in this world, are absolutely necessary for the recovery of that perfection in which we were first created, and for the regaining of that dignity and purity which we forfeited by the fall.

II. THE UNREASONABLENESS AND INGRATITUDE OF DISCONTENT AND DESPONDENCY.

1. They were not originally designed for us, but having been introduced by the folly and guilt of our first ancestor, they are necessary and unavoidable; and not only so, but they are in a high degree salutary and medicinal.

2. Though it must be allowed that some portion of misery will fall to the share of all men; that no prudence, virtue, or good fortune can entirely escape it: yet I believe that it may he assumed, and will hold true for the most part, that the hours which we spend in ease and happiness are greatly superior, in number, to those which are passed in misery and pain.

3. Many of the evils which are the subject of our hasty complaints, are brought on us by our own imprudence; disappointments frequently arise from unreasonable expectations; poverty is the general product of idleness; sickness is, in many instances, caused by intemperance; the loss of reputation, by vice or folly: in these cases, shame, one would think, should silence our murmurs, and prevent us from attributing to the constitution of human affairs what is only to be imputed to ourselves.

(G. Haggitt, M. A.)

II. AFFLICTION SHOULD BE REGARDED BY CHRISTIANS AS NEEDFUL DISCIPLINE, OR AS SALUTARY CHASTISEMENT. It is true that if God saw fit, He could as effectually carry on the work of grace in the hearts of His people, and as speedily ripen them for the bliss of heaven, without, as with, the instrumentality of affliction: but then, we know that His general plan is to convey the promised influences of His Spirit through the medium of naturally operating causes. He brings persons under the sound of the Gospel, and then He makes the faculty of hearing a means of their becoming wise unto salvation: He softens a man's heart by affliction, and then, as in a prepared soft, He sows that precious seed which springs up in a rich and abundant harvest. And this is all that we mean, when we speak of trials as necessary for the people of God: they are necessary on the principle of that analogy which pervades the various dispensations of the Almighty, both in Providence and in grace. His watchful eye detects some irregular desire beginning to operate in the breast, or some evil passion which, like a flower m the bud, only waits to be acted upon by the influence of temptation, in order to be brought to maturity: and hence, like a wise and affectionate parent, He kindly interposes to prevent the threatening danger.

III. AFFLICTION, WHETHER IT COMES UPON THE BELIEVER IN THE WAY OF DISCIPLINE OR OF CHASTISEMENT, IS REGULATED, FROM FIRST TO LAST, BY INFINITE WISDOM AND UNBOUNDED MERCY. To Him all hearts are open: He is intimately acquainted with the peculiar temperament of individual experience: and He determines, with unerring accuracy, when, and how, and to what extent, the discipline or the chastisements of His grace are necessary, in each separate instance.

(W. Knight, M. A.)

I. THE PROOFS OF THIS DOCTRINE.

1. The first proof that He cannot afflict willingly, or, as it is in the Hebrew, "from His heart," is found in His nature. Love can take no delight in our afflictions, and must ever be ready to mitigate or remove them.

2. We can trace all misery up to causes independent of the will and appointment of God.

3. In all cases we find more of mercy than judgment. You have sickness, but how much more health! pain, but how much more ease! disappointment, but how many gratifications! You sigh for a good which you have not; but how many do you actually enjoy!

4. The success of prayer in removing afflictions.

II. MUCH AFFLICTION WILL BE FOUND TO REMAIN AFTER ALL; AND WE STILL WANT THE REASON OF IT.

1. To keep man in mind that God notices his sins, although He may delay their final punishment, Sin is no trifling evil.

2. To give a spiritual direction to our affections, by showing to us the vanity of the world.

3. To call good principles into exercise, and thus to prepare us for heaven. Faith, patience, sympathy for others, are all strengthened in affliction.

III. THE LIMITATIONS BY WHICH IT IS GRACIOUSLY REGULATED.

1. He does not so afflict and grieve, as to crush under His set the prisoners of the earth. Oh no. Our Lord has purchased liberty for the prisoners of the earth, and the Gospel is the proclamation of it. We are called forth into light and liberty, into joy and hope.

2. He doth not so afflict as "to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High." The face of the Most High; the Shechinah, or visible glory of the Lord; symbolising the throne of grace in heaven; God accepting the oblation and offering of His Son for our sake, and appointing Him our Mediator, and giving us the covenant right of approaching to Him, with all our guilt and misery, that we may obtain the provided deliverance. And never does God turn away the exercise of this gracious right. In darkness, ask His light; in sorrow, inward joy; in temptation, strength and victory; in all pressing circumstances, help in thy time of need; in sickness, patience; in death, life; in all, submission.

(R. Watson.)

II. WITH RESPECT TO THOSE EVILS WHICH DO NOT ARISE FROM GUILT, BUT ARE COMMON TO THE GOOD EQUALLY WITH THE BAD, THEY ARE USEFUL FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR MINDS, AND FOR THE TRIAL AND CONFIRMATION OF OUR VIRTUE. Were there no hardships in our lot, no dangers to be encountered, no injuries nor calamities to be experienced; our contentment, our fortitude, our forgiveness, our resignation, virtues which so adorn the human character, would be untried and unknown. We may add on this point, that the frequent repetition of evils, sometimes in a milder, and sometimes in a more formidable shape, not only calls forth but confirms the virtue of good men. It is well known that when frequent returning opportunities of sinning are indulged, they produce a general tendency to vice: the heart becomes enslaved to corruption, and the fetters which retain it in bondage become too strong to be broken, without the most vigorous efforts. In like manner with respect to our good qualities, each succeeding act of virtue promotes the general tendency to goodness, and by repeated exercise, virtuous dispositions at length acquire a prevailing influence.

III. THE EVILS OF LIFE ARE OFTEN THE IMMEDIATE SOURCE OF SOME OF OUR MOST REFINED ENJOYMENTS, CALLING FORTH THOSE EXERTIONS OF SYMPATHY WHICH ARE SO GRATEFUL TO THE SUFFERER. Visit the abode where such a man is labouring under the pressure of calamity, and where will you find a more improving spectacle? Are they not the best feelings of the heart, which dictate the prayer of resignation that ascends to God? Are they not the most sacred and endearing exertions, when affection marks the supplicating eye, and hastens to relieve, shares and alleviates the weight of sorrow, watches perhaps the last moments of the departing spirit, and sweetens the slumber of death?

IV. THE EVILS OF LIFE SERVE A FURTHER IMPORTANT USE, BY LESSENING OUR ATTACHMENT TO THE PRESENT WORLD. Were heaven revealed in its full splendour, it would excite a fervour of mind amidst which the world would be utterly forgotten. But it is the will of God that our present duties be fulfilled, and therefore He hath drawn a veil over the glories of immortality. On the other hand, lest we should sink law amidst the pleasures of this life, and rest satisfied with them, we are visited with disappointment and calamity. Thus, without overwhelming us with the view of heavenly felicity, means are provided to make the prospect welcome to us, means peculiarly suited to a state of moral discipline; and think how much the hope of immortality would be banished from men's minds, if nothing occurred to weaken their attachment to the world. You may observe, moreover, the wise accommodation of sufferings to the period of life which we have attained. In youth, some strokes of adversity are sent to touch and awaken our minds. But as we advance in life, cares multiply, the things of this world present themselves in their true light, and we discover that trouble and uncertainty are part of the lot of man. When old age comes, and the period of our departure is at hand, the prospect is more and more clouded. Our earthly hopes fail, and what remains but to look beyond the approaching limits of our pilgrimage, and steadily to fix our wishes on the world to come? Of how much importance it is, that while we continue under our present preparatory discipline, our views should be directed forward to what finally awaits us, must be abundantly obvious. It assists us in opposing the power of temptation; it provides a rich treasure of pure enjoyment, it imparts an elevating and sanctifying influence to our minds, and thus corresponds with the great purposes for which our present state is appointed.

(T. S. Hardie, D. D.)

I. HERE, THEN, IS THE FACT THAT GRIEF IS THE HERITAGE OF MAN.

1. "The whole creation," said the apostle, "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Things have not altered much in their outer aspect in this matter since the apostle's time. Life is still the natural history of sorrow — man's life the bitterest of all. Man is born into a world where he does not so much find the trouble, as the trouble finds him. He is born into it, as the insect is born into the air. There are troubles which belong to the lot of individual man. And in this form they are the impartial inheritance of the race. All men, in whatever other things they may differ, agree in this, that they are alike born heirs to a patrimony of sorrow. If we escape it in one form, it meets us in another. There are the troubles which afflict the community, which fall upon the mass in its aggregation of families, neighbourhoods, communities, and nations; in which men indiscriminately seem to be the victims of a common affliction, of which no account can be given. The air gets contaminated, and chokes them wholesale with its pestilential fevers. Then there are the troubles which overtake us not unfrequently in the form of sudden calamities, the "terrible things" which, in the shape of accidents, explosions, fires, and shipwrecks, strike dumb a nation's heart. The judgments of God, or some strange license in the physical agencies of the universe, seem embattled against the interests and the safety of man. Suffering, like sin, has no vacation: it keeps no holiday. If in this huge complex of human grief it were true that the guilty only suffered, or that the profane and the incorrigible were chiefly its victims, one might suppose that a natural providence were somehow at work to guard the rights of the virtuous against the wrongs of the sinning. But as we have seen, "there is no discharge in this war." "There is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked."

2. Let us bear in mind that we have been speaking only of facts, not of causes or theories. And, further, let it be remembered that these facts are independent of any belief or disbelief as to their origin or purpose, and as to the relation, if any, which man holds to a moral government. They are not the creations of our Christian philosophy; and they are not the coinage of our Christian faith. They are a difficulty to the Christian philosopher; but they are equally so to the sceptic. They are to both equally facts. They pertain as much to the newest infidelity, as they do to the oldest Christian belief. Nor will atheism itself, the doctrine that chance or fate rules the destinies of men, afford its advocates even a momentary relief from the perplexing enigmas of fact. That doctrine, indeed, deprives us of a personal God, and, consequently, of all intelligent provision in the arrangements of the universe; it cuts us adrift from all relation to a fatherly providence. Instead of "the living God," "our Father in heaven," whose "tender mercies are over all His works," it gives us an unconscious, unintelligent, and eternal nature. In the place of creative law and a final purpose, it sets up a grim and remorseless fate. But it mitigates no evil; alleviates no pang; dries no tear in the sorrowful history of man. You ask: Why, if there be not only goodness but an Almighty justice reigning over the world and men, does it not stretch forth its hand to rescue and save from suffering? But why, if there be an Almighty chance, or fate, does it not do that? If thinking matter, or materialised thought be God, still it is a God under whose creative auspices man is born into a world of trouble. "By one man, sin" entered into the world and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have stoned. Man is a fallen being, a self-ruined intelligence — poised and quivering between two infinities; from the one of which he is banished, for the other of which he is being trained. He is God's child, in exile. He suffers as a discrowned king. That is the one interpretation. Suffering and guilt are correlated facts. They mutually involve and explicate each other.

II. WE HAVE, SECONDLY, THE DIVINE COMPASSION, IN ITS RELATION TO SUFFERING. "He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men."

1. And here, first, it is claimed that all human suffering comes within the fore. knowledge, and is under the control of God. While, as a fact, suffering in its origin and infliction does always hinge on to secondary causes in the fatalities and falsities of man; those secondary causes in their action do always, immediately or remotely, fasten on to the purpose of God. Afflictions are not an accident. "The curse causeless shall not come." The writers of the Old Testament Scriptures are never more emphatic than in their assertion of this double parentage of human sorrow. If they knew but little of the scientific set up and mechanical movements of the laws of nature, they knew a great deal inspirationally of the supreme life, of which those laws were the appointed expression. They never ignore the immediate presence of God in His works; they never unfasten His governing hand from the smallest or the greatest events. They neither substitute the sovereignty of the Divine will for natural law; nor put natural law in the place of the Supreme will. As these writers uniformly teach, the plan of Providence takes in the universe as a whole. The individual is never forgotten in the multitude or the magnitude of the Divine cares. The interests of the man have a place in the complications of his actings in the world. "His eyes behold, his eyelids try the children of men." Even in what are held to be the accidents of life, those strange, unforeseen, and as we are apt to think, purely fortuitous events, which anticipate all our foresight and calculation, and which entail so constantly so large a measure of suffering upon the man and the community, the inspired writers have a place for the anticipation and the activity of a prescient providence. They are contingencies to us, a mere chapter of accidents; but not to the foreplanning and all-seeing mind of God. Surely there can be no absenteeism, no indifference, no incapacity in the all-perfect infinite God. Along the myriad antecedent lines of concatenated human agency at any point of space or time, He, indeed, is alone able to look. But that the first link and the last link and each intermediate link in the chain of human causes leading to that and similar catastrophes fasten on to the foreknowledge and governing will of God, we can accept on the testimony of His Word. We are speaking of foresight, of that prescient outlook of Providence, which takes all human occurrences out of the run of chance surprises, and puts them amongst foreseen and permitted events. There can be no accidents in the scheme of infinite thought; there can be no surprise to the intelligence that infinitely knows We see only results. To God the beginning, with its antecedents all hidden and remote, is a presence.

2. Many of our troubles, probably most of them, have their causes in ourselves. They come within the Divine plan not as visitations which God foreordains, or directly inflicts; but as actualities which He foresees, emergent in the history of man. They would be equally facts if they were not foreseen: that they are foreseen does not necessarily make them facts. This is not to shut out all direct intervention on the part of God from the sufferings of man; it only puts in a protest against the notion that makes all suffering the direct and arbitrary infliction of God. Providence is the action of God through law; and, as a general rule, providential laws work best for him who works the best with them. They work — it may be silently and in secret — but they work surely against the man who works against them. There are laws of health, physical, and mental which, if a man wilfully disregard or habitually transgress them, will work directly against and not for him. A man is intemperate in his habits; he lives in excess. Very well. Subsequent temperance may alleviate, but it cannot wholly exonerate him from the penalty of a long course of riotous living. In how many ways, and with what a perverse tenacity of wilful ignorance, we are violating these laws and are suffering bitterly and hopelessly in consequence, can be known only to God. That we do violate them, that many of our sad experiences are due to such violations, it would be idle to dispute. This suicidal raid on the economies of life, in spite of the warnings and protests of God, is one of our deadly sins. So, too, in what is called the mystery of sudden death. In the case of many a successful man of business, the cup is dashed from his lips just when its fragrant sweetness is being filled to the brim. Of course, everyone is shocked at the mystery of Providence which, in so arbitrary a manner, puts its arrest on the life of such a man. To God, it may be, all the mystery of the case is explained in that man's dogged determination to crowd the work of two lives into one. The engine. work of the brain was driven at high pressure; and so the machinery broke down.

3. But now there are troubles and afflictions — and these not few — which we must consider only as the punishment of sin. "The Lord doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men." But then He does afflict and grieve them, when they offend. "He will not cast" them "off forever. He will have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies." But the compassion is in the use of the rod, not in the withholding of it. We thus suffer because we sin. And, presumably, we all suffer in some form and at some time, because we have all sinned against some law or commandment of God. Do a wrong thing, with a bad intent, — and though you put the breadth of creation between you and it, the penalty will reach you. "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished." In the Old Testament Decalogue we have a summary of the moral statues under which man is placed. And as these were intended to determine the actions of men and do determine them, all men keeping or breaking, or alternately breaking and keeping them; so the providence of God, as the guardian of law, deals retributively with men. May we not expect that God will claim the right to be heard, and to vindicate Himself and His works against the insults of men? No: God will not abdicate His throne because of the atheism of men. We may refuse to see any convincing proofs of His busy presence with us. We may openly deny that any such presence exists; or we may distress ourselves with a superficial reading of the many mysteries which are burdening the air with shrieks or breaking human hearts with grief. But that presence, if unseen and unrecognised by men, is immanent and real God works in silence. He works and waits, on lines that stretch into the eternal And now, what, in view of these conclusions, is the first sentiment with which we ought to fill our minds? Is it not that of profound thankfulness for that revelation in which the origin and the purpose of all human suffering are made known? In the meantime, let us always recollect this, — that the dealings of God with men are regulated and are to be interpreted by the fact that we are a race of sinners. And, finally, let us also remember that the issues of this strife between God and man are not all played out in the present world. They do not expire always in the waste of health, in the loss of friends, the wreck of property, the crumbling down of the pride of man. The last settlement will cover all the future; as it will explain all the past. Let us then be patient and submissive. "The Lord is at hand."

(John Burton.)

(J. Pulsford.)

(R. South.)

     9615   hope, results of

Lamentations 3:31-32

     6233   rejection, experience

Lamentations 3:31-33

     1310   God, as judge
     5003   human race, and God
     5945   self-pity

Lamentations 3:31-36

     5461   prisoners

February the Twenty-Fifth the Fresh Eye
"His compassions fail not: they are new every morning." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 22-33. We have not to live on yesterday's manna; we can gather it fresh to-day. Compassion becomes stale when it becomes thoughtless. It is new thought that keeps our pity strong. If our perception of need can remain vivid, as vivid as though we had never seen it before, our sympathies will never fail. The fresh eye insures the sensitive heart. And our God's compassions are so new because He never becomes accustomed to …
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

Solitude, Silence, Submission
"He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope."--Lamentations 3:28, 29. THUS the prophet describes the conduct of a person in deep anguish of heart. When he does not know what to do, his soul, as if by instinct, humbles itself. He gets into some secret place, he utters no speech, he gives himself over to moaning and to tears, and then he bows himself lower and yet lower before the Divine Majesty, as if he felt …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 42: 1896

"And we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. "
Isaiah lxiv. 6.--"And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Here they join the punishment with the deserving cause, their uncleanness and their iniquities, and so take it upon them, and subscribe to the righteousness of God's dealing. We would say this much in general--First, Nobody needeth to quarrel God for his dealing. He will always be justified when he is judged. If the Lord deal more sharply with you than with others, you may judge there is a difference …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

To the Reader. Christian Reader
To The Reader. Christian Reader, This holy preacher of the gospel had so many convictions upon his spirit of the necessity of the duties of humiliation and mourning, and of people's securing the eternal interest of their souls for the life to come, by flying into Jesus Christ for remission of sins in his blood, that he made these the very scope of his sermons in many public humiliations, as if it had been the one thing which he conceived the Lord was calling for in his days; a clear evidence whereof …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Lord is My Portion. Lam 3:24
…
John Newton—Olney Hymns

The Disciple, -- what is the Meaning and Purpose of the Cross...
The Disciple,--What is the meaning and purpose of the cross, and why do pain and suffering exist in the world? The Master,--1. The cross is the key to heaven. At the moment when by My baptism I took the cross upon My shoulders for the sake of sinners, heaven was opened, and by means of My thirty-three years bearing of the cross and by death upon it, heaven, which by reason of sin was closed to believers, was for ever opened to them. Now as soon as believers take up their cross and follow Me they …
Sadhu Sundar Singh—At The Master's Feet

How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements.
There is another evil and distemper which believers are subject to, and that is a case of fainting through manifold discouragements, which make them so heartless that they can do nothing; yea, and to sit up, as if they were dead. The question then is, how such a soul shall make use of Christ as in the end it may be freed from that fit of fainting, and win over those discouragements: for satisfaction to which we shall, 1. Name some of those discouragements which occasion this. 2. Show what Christ …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

The Practice of Piety in Glorifying God in the Time of Sickness, and when Thou Art Called to Die in the Lord.
As soon as thou perceivest thyself to be visited with any sickness, meditate with thyself: 1. That "misery cometh not forth of the dust; neither doth affliction spring out of the earth." Sickness comes not by hap or chance (as the Philistines supposed that their mice and emrods came, 1 Sam. vi. 9), but from man's wickedness, which, as sparkles, breaketh out. "Man suffereth," saith Jeremiah, "for his sins." "Fools," saith David, "by reason of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities, …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

From his Entrance on the Ministry in 1815, to his Commission to Reside in Germany in 1820
1815.--After the long season of depression through which John Yeardley passed, as described in the last chapter, the new year of 1815 dawned with brightness upon his mind. He now at length saw his spiritual bonds loosed; and the extracts which follow describe his first offerings in the ministry in a simple and affecting manner. 1 mo. 5.--The subject of the prophet's going down to the potter's house opened so clearly on my mind in meeting this morning that I thought I could almost have publicly …
John Yeardley—Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel

Meditations for one that is Like to Die.
If thy sickness be like to increase unto death, then meditate on three things:--First, How graciously God dealeth with thee. Secondly, From what evils death will free thee. Thirdly, What good death will bring unto thee. The first sort of Meditations are, to consider God's favourable dealing with thee. 1. Meditate that God uses this chastisement of thy body but as a medicine to cure thy soul, by drawing thee, who art sick in sin, to come by repentance unto Christ, thy physician, to have thy soul healed …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Letter xxvi. (Circa A. D. 1127) to the Same
To the Same He excuses the brevity of his letter on the ground that Lent is a time of silence; and also that on account of his profession and his ignorance he does not dare to assume the function of teaching. 1. You will, perhaps, be angry, or, to speak more gently, will wonder that in place of a longer letter which you had hoped for from me you receive this brief note. But remember what says the wise man, that there is a time for all things under the heaven; both a time to speak and a time to keep …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Of the Character of the Unregenerate.
Ephes. ii. 1, 2. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. AMONG all the various trusts which men can repose in each other, hardly any appears to be more solemn and tremendous, than the direction of their sacred time, and especially of those hours which they spend in the exercise of public devotion. …
Philip Doddridge—Practical Discourses on Regeneration

Question Lxxxii of Devotion
I. Is Devotion a Special Kind of Act? Cardinal Cajetan, On the Meaning of the Term "Devotion" S. Augustine, Confessions, XIII. viii. 2 II. Is Devotion an Act of the Virtue of Religion? III. Is Contemplation, that is Meditation, the Cause of Devotion? Cardinal Cajetan, On the Causes of Devotion " " On the Devotion of Women IV. Is Joy an Effect of Devotion? Cardinal Cajetan, On Melancholy S. Augustine, Confessions, II. x. I Is Devotion a Special Kind of Act? It is by our acts that we merit. But …
St. Thomas Aquinas—On Prayer and The Contemplative Life

The Mercy of God
The next attribute is God's goodness or mercy. Mercy is the result and effect of God's goodness. Psa 33:5. So then this is the next attribute, God's goodness or mercy. The most learned of the heathens thought they gave their god Jupiter two golden characters when they styled him good and great. Both these meet in God, goodness and greatness, majesty and mercy. God is essentially good in himself and relatively good to us. They are both put together in Psa 119:98. Thou art good, and doest good.' This …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Covenant Duties.
It is here proposed to show, that every incumbent duty ought, in suitable circumstances, to be engaged to in the exercise of Covenanting. The law and covenant of God are co-extensive; and what is enjoined in the one is confirmed in the other. The proposals of that Covenant include its promises and its duties. The former are made and fulfilled by its glorious Originator; the latter are enjoined and obligatory on man. The duties of that Covenant are God's law; and the demands of the law are all made …
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

"Take My Yoke Upon You, and Learn of Me," &C.
Matt. xi. 20.--"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," &c. Self love is generally esteemed infamous and contemptible among men. It is of a bad report every where, and indeed as it is taken commonly, there is good reason for it, that it should be hissed out of all societies, if reproaching and speaking evil of it would do it. But to speak the truth, the name is not so fit to express the thing, for that which men call self love, may rather be called self hatred. Nothing is more pernicious to a man's …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

"Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. "
Isaiah xxvi. 3.--"Thou shall keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." Christ hath left us his peace, as the great and comprehensive legacy, "My peace I leave you," John xiv. 27. And this was not peace in the world that he enjoyed; you know what his life was, a continual warfare; but a peace above the world, that passeth understanding. "In the world you shall have trouble, but in me you shall have peace," saith Christ,--a peace that shall make trouble …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

No Sorrow Like Messiah's Sorrow
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow! A lthough the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the law of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophecies (Luke 24:44) , bear an harmonious testimony to MESSIAH ; it is not necessary to suppose that every single passage has an immediate and direct relation to Him. A method of exposition has frequently obtained [frequently been in vogue], of a fanciful and allegorical cast [contrivance], under the pretext …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate,
CLEARLY EXPLAINED, AND LARGELY IMPROVED, FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BELIEVERS. 1 John 2:1--"And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." By JOHN BUNYAN, Author of "The Pilgrim's Progress." London: Printed for Dorman Newman, at the King's Arms, in the Poultry, 1689. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. This is one of the most interesting of Bunyan's treatises, to edit which required the Bible at my right hand, and a law dictionary on my left. It was very frequently republished; …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3