September 16

Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord. - Psalms 119:65.

THE Lord’s people will always have a good word to speak concerning their Lord and Saviour. If they are asked whether he has not been a good Master, they will tell us that he has never been unreasonable or severe in any of his demands. Ask them whether they have not had reason to speak well of his name: they will tell us, at the end of twenty, thirty, forty, or sixty years spent in his service, that he never has laid more upon them than he enabled them to bear. Our performances have been very poor, but he has smiled upon them, and has said, “She hath done what she could.” Some of his servants have been laid by through sickness, and could do nothing; but he has never sent them away to the hospital! No; but he has nourished them kindly at home. Some of them are now grown old, and can expect to do little or nothing for him now; but he has not forsaken them. He does not cast off his servants in the time of old age: he says, “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth.”

And if we ask them whether he has not been to them a powerful Helper when they went to him pressed down with a sense of weakness, he said, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” “My strength shall be made perfect in thy weakness,” and “as thy days so shall thy strength be.” They thought that such an approaching calamity would entirely overwhelm them, but with the season came the seasonable grace,- “Grace to help them in time of need.” They can now say, with David, “In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.”

And if we look back and see the stones we have erected all along the journey of life, some of them in secret places, but we know where to find them; some of them, perhaps, are now covered over with nettles and thorns; yet, removing these, we can read them again:- “Hitherto,” and “hitherto,” and “hitherto, hath the Lord helped me.” Yes; and has he not also been our kindest friend? “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.” Has this been too expressive of the tenderness of his consolation? When others have forsaken us, he has been with us even “in trouble,” and principally then.

As our Friend he has reproved us, but “faithful are the wounds of a friend;” and as Joseph, when he spoke roughly to his brethren, was obliged to turn away and weep, “for his bowels yearned within him,” so he has said, “Is Ephraim, my dear son, is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him.” He has corresponded with his people; he has visited them; and, when unable to go to his house, they have found him in the chamber of sickness, comforting them on the bed of languishing, and saying to their souls “I am thy salvation.”

And he has been to his servants, the best of portions. There was a time when we said, “The Lord is my portion, therefore will I hope in him;” “Whom have I in heaven but thee?” Our expectations from him, from that hour, were very large; and we were commanded to “ask, that we might receive, that our joy might be full.” And has he failed us? Has he not said to us, “Have I been a barren wilderness, a land of drought?”

And now, therefore, after so many past days, we are saying, He has done for me “exceeding abundantly above all that I could ask or think.”