66 Though Envy shall detest thee, Let that no wit molest thee, Thank God that hath so blest thee, And sit down, Robin, and rest thee!" Quoth Tusser. "It cannot be spoken how injurious those men are to themselves, that will be managing their own cares, and plotting the prevention of their fears, and projecting their own, both indemnity, and advantages; for, as they lay an unnecessary load upon their own shoulders, so they draw upon themselves the miseries of an unremediable disappointment. Alas! how can their weakness make good those events which they vainly promise to themselves, or avert those judgments they would escape, or uphold them in those evils they would undergo? Whereas, if we put all this upon a gracious God, He contrives it with care; looking for nothing from us but our trust and thankfulness."-Bp. Hall, Of Contentation, § xx. "Though peace and innocence make no great noise, yet their undisturbed pleasures yield the greatest contentment."-Patrick's Pilgrim. Beus propitius esto mihi peccatori! Prov. xxiv. 19, 20. "Fret not thyself because of the evil man, neither be thou envious at the wicked; "For there shall be no reward to the evil man; the candle of the wicked shall be put out." THOUGH it be written, that they who "put their trust in the Lord shall be even as the mount Sion, which may not be removed, but standeth fast for ever'," still, the storms of life will beat even upon the righteous head, as they did upon the holy hill. Though the Lord, by his Holy Spirit, hath set his name there, and will do well "unto those that are good and true of heart;" though, as "the hills stand about Jerusalem, even so standeth the Lord round about his people, from this time forth for evermore," and "the rod of the ungodly" shall not come "into the lot of the righteous ";" still the badge of trouble, and of sorrow, and of vanity with vexation of spirit, clings to every thing that is mortal. 1 Ps. cxxv. 1. 2 Ibid. 2, 3. The world is full of confusion, and wherever we turn our eyes, whether to the examination of our own hearts, or to the mingled multitude without, we have full reason to know that every thing is in a state of unrest2, and that he who cannot set his foot on something more firm and stable than this world, cannot be at rest. God alone can give unto his faithful "servants that peace which the world cannot give!” The result of this troubled state of things which our sin brought into the world, (for in the beginning, "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good 3,") is this,-that not the world generally, but all the inhabiters thereof are weak, and in a state of distraction and solicitude, labouring in vain, and disquieting themselves, "like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt +" One is vexed and troubled with this thing, and another with that, and a third is overwhelmed with many. And all this is a lesson to us that our "rest" is not here. We are to "desire a 4 5 better country, that is, an heavenly "." There remaineth a rest to the people of God, and to it we are to seek. What has the Christian, unto whom his Lord and Saviour consigned peace, to do with the noise, and tumult, and din, and confusion, of things which are of the earth earthy? Certainly he is not to be entangled in the web of worldliness. He is 2 "Amazed distress, in sad unrest." Daniel. German readers will call to mind the expressive "Unrhue." 3 Gen. i. 31. to have a spiritual discernment, and to look out in thankfulness from the ark of his faith, being fully assured of this, that God in his own good time will deliver him, and that if he be quiet he shall at length see the salvation of God. And, "When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble"?" Or this, Christian brethren, or the like to it should be the full assurance of one strong in the faith and "the truth as it is in Jesus." Having been received into the ark of Christ's Church, he should be persuaded that (whatever the hardships on the way) it is God's will, that being "joyful through hope" instead of fretful through disquietude, "he may so pass the waves of this troublesome world, as finally to come to the land of everlasting life, where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest?!" This, however, as we all full well know, is not the common state of things. Men's hearts are rocked to and fro, "as the trees of the wood are moved by the wind." They are full of heaviness, and their souls are disquieted within them. And so it has been ever since the fall, and, in a greater or less degree, will continue to be so till the end of time. Some will fret themselves from constitutional debility, others from weakness in the faith. When wickedness is seen to flourish, and truth and goodness are thrown into the shade and disregarded,-when the ungodly are in prosperity, in no peril of death, but lusty 6 Job xxxiv. 29. 7 Job iii. 17. |