73. Peace and Comfort
Peace and Comfort
ROOTS UNAFFECTED.—The wind which blows over and about the fruit-tree does not apparently affect the roots and lower part of the trunk. All it does is to shake the branches, break off the rotten ones, blow away dead leaves, and shake off the ripe fruit for use. So, when trouble comes from God, the soul maintains the roots of its faith and love in the Rock of Ages unmoved. All that it does is to destroy what is superfluous and corrupt, and to draw from us the manifestation of the graces of the Spirit.
TRIALS UNIVERSAL.—Let a man be in the most favorable circumstances, he is sure to have something to pain his heart. Naaman was a great man, but he was a leper; Paul a great apostle, but he had a thorn in the flesh; David a mighty sovereign, but his house was not right with God. Man looks to new relationships, and fancies they will be a beautiful garden, on which the sun will shine, and the dews descend; but he will find a grave there. He looks to new departments of business as a garden; but he will find a grave there. There is some cloud on every landscape, a mildew on every flower.
TWO-FOLD LEGACY.—The very fact that you have troubles is a proof of His faithfulness; for you have got one half of His legacy, and you will have the other half. You know that Christ’s last will and testament has two portions in it. “In the word, ye shall have tribulation;” you have grot that. The next clause is, “In me, ye shall have peace.” You have that too. “Be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.” That is yours also. THE SHEPHERD’S RIGHT.—A shepherd was mourning over the death of his favorite child, and bitterly complaining that what he loved most tenderly, and was in itself most lovely, had been taken from him. Suddenly a stranger of grave and venerable appearance stood before him, and beckoned him forth into the field. It was night, and not a word was spoken till they arrived at the fold, when the stranger thus addressed him: “When you select one of these lambs from the flock, you choose the best and most beautiful among them. Why should you murmur because I, the Good Shepherd of the sheep, have selected from those which you have nourished for me the one that was most fitted for my eternal fold?” The mysterious stranger was seen no more, and the father’s heart was comforted.
CONSOLATION IN OLD AGE.—”I am on the bright side of seventy,” said an aged man of God; “the bright side, because nearer to everlasting glory.” “Nature fails,” said another, “but I am happy.” “My work is done,” said the Countess of Huntingdon, when eighty-four years old: “I have nothing to do but to go to my Father.” “Eighty-and-six years,” was Polycarp’s answer when required to deny the truth, “have I served my Saviour, and He hath never done me any harm; and shall I deny Him now?”
CHIEF’E TESTIMONY.—An Oneida chief, named Skenandon, having yielded to the instructions of a Christian, and lived a reformed man for fifty years, said just before he died, in his hundred and twentieth year, “I am an aged hemlock; the winds of one hundred years have whistled through my branches; I am dead at the top” (he was blind); “why I yet live the great good Spirit only knows. Pray that I may wait with patience my appointed time to die; and when I die, lay me by the side of my minister, that I may go up with Him at the great resurrection.”