motive to be still in the hour of darkness, and to wait for the peace and the deliverance which he has promised in his own time; assured of our inviolable security, if we put our trust in Him who is our refuge and strength: “a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." And "it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation."* * Isa. xxv. 4, 8, 9, 162 CHAPTER VII. ON THE SOURCES OF CONSOLATION. WE have already traced the duties of the mourner, and shall now take a view of the consolations provided for him, in submitting to the will of God. These consolations are promised to those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, who are desirous of imitating his example, and living to his glory. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked;" neither can the troubled bosom, agitated by a thousand turbulent passions and solicitudes, lay claim to a participation of those consolations which are provided only for such as live by faith upon the Son of God. Yet even those who are estranged from God, though they cannot appropriate these comforts to themselves, are not left without solace under the loss of their relatives. They claim our pity, for they suffer acutely they feel as much as others, and they have not the same support under their trials. They know the bitterness of sorrow, without the pleasure of obedience; they suffer affliction, without the heart-cheering prospect of eternal rest, when "death shall be swallowed up in victory." If these pages should fall into the hands of such an one-if you are indeed mourning the loss of your earthly comforts, and not a ray of hope, reflected from eternity, cheers your solitude, and animates you with delightful anticipations of futurity; if you have lost your dearest treasure, that in which your soul delighted, and your prospects are now clouded by the gloom of death; if you are suffering under the mighty hand of God, and yet perceive not the hand that gives you the bread and water of affliction, nor whence cometh your help; if you are experiencing his wrath, and are not induced to inquire wherefore he contends with you, and to search and try your hearts, repent of your iniquities, and turn unto the Lord your God; if you are angry with him under your trials, refusing to yield submission to his will, and calling in question the equity of his government, or the purity, wisdom, and goodness of his dispensations; if you harden that heart which he would mould into conformity to his will, and impiously murmur against heaven, or carelessly neglect its admonitions, it is to you I would address the following considerations; and while they tend to mitigate your grief, may they induce you to be seriously concerned about your own state: for, if you have no glimmering of peace, except a vague and ill-defined idea of a future state of ease, it is time that you begin to seek that rest which "remaineth for the people of God." How are you prepared to enter on an eternal scene of existence, if you cannot bear the will of God? How shall you enjoy the happiness of heaven, where it will be your sole employ to love and serve him, or be conformed to the image of the Saviour, when you refuse obedience to your heavenly Father, and when your heart is fixed and riveted to earth? It is in this world that the state of man is irrecoverably fixed; he will receive hereafter according to the deeds done in the body; and while you are living estranged from God, and secretly hating his laws and his government, how shall you follow your dear relation, now gone to glory? Thus unprepared for death, and for your coming change, adore the long-suffering goodness and sparing mercy of Jehovah, that you are not called away from this world, that life is still afforded you, that you are still invited to seek God, and to attend to those things which belong to your everlasting peace. Disease might have been commissioned to cut short your slender thread of life, instead of your dearest friends: at this moment you might In have been a nothing; and the future destiny of your soul, born for immortality, might have been fixed. Where, then, would the disembodied spirit have found rest? In heaven? Alas! no; for here there is nothing congenial with it. The atmosphere of heaven is love; the Lamb of God is the light thereof; and all its joys and all its engagements centre in loving, adoring, and praising Him that was slain for sinners. these acclamations you could not have united with the spirits of the just; and here, therefore, is no happiness for you. Yet this is the rest prepared for the people of God; and if you cannot enter into it, you must be for ever excluded from the blessedness of the righteous. Your spirit is not fitted for communion with the pure intelligences of a heavenly world: and since there is no alternative but happiness and misery, if you lose the one, you will necessarily enter into the sorrows of those who are excluded from it. As you have been living without God in the world, and refusing to listen to his admonitions, so have you increased his displeasure; and justly might he call you away from life, and consign you to that cheerless abode, where Hope never enters. But though God reminds you of the uncertainty of life; though he shows you the necessity of an habitual preparation for death, and seeks to soften and gain admission to your |
