[1] While God visits us at all, it is a sign He thinks of us.
The present life is not the time for punishment devoid of
mercy. While the debtor is on his way to prison, he may
agree with his adversary, and escape the messenger's hands.
While the sick man feels pain, there is vitality and
activity in his constitution, and he may recover. And
therefore I think it must be a terrible thing to have one's
perdition sealed; to have the process already closed; both
depositions and sentence, and laid up in God's chancery, as
an irreversible doom, and so him who is its object troubled
no further, but allowed the full choice of his
pleasures,--as one permits a man, between sentence and
execution, his choice of viands, in full certainty that
when his hour hath tolled the terrible law will take its
course. How smoothly glides along the boat upon the wide,
unruffled, though most rapid stream that hurries it onward
to the precipice, over which its waters break in thunder!
How calm, and undisturbed by the smallest ripple, slumbers
its unreflecting steersman! Or for one rock in the midst of
its too smooth channel, against which it may be dashed and
whirled about, to shake him from this infatuated sleep! It
is the only hope that remains for him. Woe to him if to the
end his course be pleasant! That end will pay it
all!--_Wiseman._
[2] Afflictions leave the wicked worse, more impenitent,
hardened in sin, and outrageous in their wicked practices.
Every plague on Egypt added to the plague of hardness on
Pharaoh's heart; he that for some while could beg prayers
of Moses for himself, at last comes to that pass that he
threatens to kill him if he come to him any more. Or, what
a prodigious height do we see some come to in sin after
some great sickness or other judgment! Oh, how grossly and
ravenous are they after their prey, when once they got off
their clog and chain from their heels! When physic works
not kindly, it doth not only leave the disease uncured, but
the poison of the physic stays in the body also. Many
appear thus poisoned by their afflictions.--_Gurnall,_
1617-1679.
Trust not in any unsanctified afflictions, as if these
could permanently and really change the condition of your
heart. I have seen the characters of the writing which the
flames had turned into a film of buoyant coal; I have seen
the thread which has been passed through the fire retain,
in its cold grey ashes, the twist it had got in spinning; I
have found every shivered splinter of the flint as hard as
the unbroken stone: and let trials come, in Providence,
sharp as the fire and ponderous as the crushing hammer,
unless a gracious God send along with these something else
than these, bruised, broken, bleeding as thy heart may be,
its nature remains the same.--_Guthrie._