August 1

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flames kindle upon thee. - Isaiah 43:2.

LET us view the Christian as a sufferer, for so he is; and then he says, “I will go in the strength of the Lord God” to bear my trials. “Ah! trials must and will befall,” and we are commanded not to think of them as strange. “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward;” and the Christian is born again to trouble. Bacon tells us that “prosperity is the promise of the Old Testament, and adversity the promise of the New.” And our Lord said to his disciples, “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” I am not, says the Christian, required to go out in search of trouble, but I am not to decline it when I find it in my way. I am then to take up my cross, and not to say when I come into distress, with a sullen countenance, “This is my grief, and I must bear it,” but this is my grief, and I will bear it, and, with my divine Lord, “The cup which my heavenly Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” “Not my will, but thine, be done.” “I must in patience possess my soul; I may mourn, but I must not murmur; I may say, I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.”

Thus we may “glorify God in the fires;” thus we may display the excellency of the religion we profess, and it is thus we may he an example to all around. But how can we accomplish this? If we sink in the day of adversity, our strength is small,-and sink we must, unless we have other strength than our own. But who is this that says, “I will he with thee in trouble;” “when thou passest through the waters, I will he with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flames kindle upon thee.” “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass, and as thy day, so shall thy strength be.”

Sometimes a Christian may be dismayed in the prospect and in the approach of trouble coming upon him; yet notwithstanding his fears and forebodings, when the trial comes, there comes along with it grace to help in time of need! Then he wonders at his previous apprehensions; and now, when he looks back to the enduring of it, he feels that he would be willing to go through the same exercises again, were he sure of the same succour and consolations.

The people of the world wonder how it is that Christians bear their trials as they do. The world can see their troubles well enough, but they cannot see their inward supports; they can see how one affliction peels them, and another strips them, and another pains and oppresses them, and wonder that they do not sink under their distresses; but they cannot see the everlasting arms underneath them, and how that the eternal God is their refuge. They can see their distresses, but they witness not their nearness to God in prayer, and how they can say, with David, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure; this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he maketh it not to grow.”