September 4

Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God? - John 11:40.

LET us, therefore, learn to confide in the Saviour. First, With regard to ourselves. Our state may be desperate as to relief from creatures, yet that is no reason why we should despair. Our case is not hopeless if he is nigh. If he comes our blind eyes shall be opened, our heart of stone shall be turned to flesh; he will make all things new. Do we feel our misery and danger? Through ail our perils he can bring us safe. Oh that we did more fully and implicitly believe in his all-sufficiency and goodness!

Secondly, With regard to others. There are parents whose children go astray. They are ready to despond. But they should never be tempted to give up praying and counselling the objects of their affectionate solicitude. Let us do all things in the name of Jesus; let us bring him in to our aid by faith. He can of stones raise up children to Abraham. Let us think of Manasseh, of Paul, of Bunyan. “Strong is his arm, and mighty.” But, says some, my case is desperate. My wound cannot be healed. The grave has received my father, my mother, my sister. Well, if he comes not to their grave, it is not because his arm has lost its power, but because his power is under the control of wisdom. But the fact is, he will go to that grave. The time is coming when he will look down from that elevation, and say to angels, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, and I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” And down he comes with the voice of the archangel, and changes the vile body,-

“And every face, and every form,

Looks heavenly and divine.”

And this is what Christians are all looking for. This subject is interesting to all, for he will visit every tomb and call all forth. But mark the result:-“All that are in the graves shall hear his voice and come forth, some to the resurrection of everlasting life, some to the resurrection of damnation. The benefit is peculiar. The butler and the baker were both brought out of prison; but one was restored to the favour of Pharaoh, the other was hanged. That can scarcely be called a change which brings persons out of a bad condition to place them in a worse.

The sons and daughters of vice, who pamper the body, who nourish it in sickness, who spend so much time in dressing it, should remember that death will deliver those idolized bodies to the worm, and those neglected souls to the curse of God. Oh, what a dreadful bondage are thousands under! If they die in the vanity of their minds, they will rise in all the seeds of anguish, deformity, and pain which they have sown on earth, all rendered immortal! Immortal pain! immortal anguish! immortal sorrows! Oh, there is something so dreadful in all this, that we turn from it to the language of the apostle, and say, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”