As it is recorded that David, in the heat of battle,
waxed faint, so may it be written of all the servants of the Lord. Fits
of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be,
we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous,
the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the
joyous not always happy. There maybe here and there men of iron, to whom
wear and tear work no perceptible detriment, but surely the rust frets
even these; and as for ordinary men, the Lord knows, and makes them to
know, that they are but dust. Knowing by most painful experience what
deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by
no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some
of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon, that younger men might not
fancy that some strange thing had happened to them when they became for
a season possessed by melancholy; and that sadder men might know that
one upon whom the sun has shone right joyously did not always walk in
the light.
It is not necessary by
quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that
seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not
all of them. The life of Luther might suffice to give a thousand
instances, and he was by no means of the weaker sort. His great spirit
was often in the seventh heaven of exultation, and as frequently on the
borders of despair. His very death-bed was not free from tempests, and
he sobbed himself into his last sleep like a great wearied child.
Instead of multiplying Gases, let us dwell upon the reasons why these
things are permitted why it is that the children of light sometimes walk
in the thick darkness; why the heralds of the daybreak find themselves
at times in tenfold night.
Is it not first that they are men? Being
men, they are compassed with infirmity, and heirs of sorrow. Well said
the wise man in the Apocrypha, (Ecclus xl. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-8) “Great
travail is created for all men, and a heavy yoke on the sons of Adam,
from the day that they go out of their mother’s womb unto that day that
they return to the mother of all things—namely, their thoughts and fear
of their hearts, and their imagination of things that they wail for, and
the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him
that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in
blue silk, and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple
linen—wrath, envy, trouble, and unquietness, and fear of death and
rigour, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the
ungodly.” Grace guards us from much of this, but because we have not
more of grace we still suffer even from ills preventible. Even under the
economy of redemption it is most clear that we are to endure
infirmities, otherwise there were no need of the promised Spirit to help
us in them. Continue at
Refocusing our Eyes
