'Ye clothe you, but there is none warm.' The clothing was to guard
against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed
to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this
application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and
its failure to answer its purpose points to a real sorrow and
insufficiency of a life lived without God. In it there is no real
defence against the manifold evils which storm upon all of us. When the
bitter, biting weather comes, what have you to shelter you from the cold
blast? Some rags of stoical resignation or proverbial commonplaces?
'What is done cannot be helped'; 'What cannot be cured must be endured';
'It is a long lane that has no turning,' and the like. But what are
these? You may have other occupations to interest you, but these will
not heal, though they may divert your attention from, your gaping
wounds. You have friends, and the like, but though you have all these
and much beside, these will not avail. 'The covering is shorter than
that a man can wrap himself in it.' Naked and shivering, exposed to the
pelting and the pitiless storm, with rags soaked through, and chilled to
the bone, what is there but death before the man in the wild weather on
some trackless moor? And what is there for us if we have to bear the
storms and cold of life without God? No doubt most of us struggle
through somehow. Time heals much; work does a great deal; to live is so
much, that no living being can be wholly miserable. Other cares and
other occupations blossom and grow, and the brown mounds get covered
with sweet springing grass. But how many lie down and die? How many for
the rest of their lives go crushed and broken-spirited? How many carry
about with them, deep in their hearts, a sleepless sorrow? How many have
to bear passionate paroxysms of agony and bursts of angry grief, all of
which might have been softened and soothed and made to gleam with the
mellow light of hope as from a hidden sun, if only, instead of defiantly
and weakly fronting the world alone, they had found in the man Christ
the refuge from the storm and the covert from the tempest. How can a man
face all the awful possibilities and the solemn certainties of life
without God and not go mad? It is impossible to work without Him; it is
impossible to rejoice without Him; but more impossible still, if that
could be, is it to endure without Him. It is in union with Jesus Christ,
and with Him alone, that we shall receive 'the pure linen, clean and
white,' which is a surer defence than the warrior's mail, and 'being
clothed we shall not be found naked.'