February 15

Although my house be not so with God. - 2 Samuel 23:5.

HERE is a depth of distress. David experienced many sore trials; the affliction to which he refers here was domestic, and principally of a moral nature. Religion does not destroy or eradicate relative feelings; but it improves, enlivens, enlarges, and regulates them. David’s heart was strongly set upon his house. Hence it was that he felt suffering from this quarter touching him to the quick. And who does not? “A man’s chief foes,” says the Scripture, “are of his own household;” and the same may be said of his trials and afflictions. A man can endure the storms and buffetings of the world when he finds in his home a calm and an inviting retreat; but how hard to hear when no comfort grows there, when nothing but sorrow is to be gathered there! What disappointments do fond parents experience from this quarter! “Children,” says Mr. Henry, “are certain cares, and uncertain comforts and probable crosses.” One perhaps is maimed in body; another is unsuccessful in business; a third is wretched in his connections; another is diseased; and another is carried down to an early grave, and left under a stone on which is inscribed by a bleeding heart, “Childhood and youth are vanity”-“Thou destroyest the hopes of men;” while another is seen walking the downward road, a companion of transgressors. How was it with David? Various domestic calamities had befallen him. Ah! this was the sting of his affliction-“My house is not so with God.”

Some religious parents can enter into his feelings, while they often think of their children, of their forms, of their features, of their talents, of their accomplishments, of their worldly prospects, and of their settlement in life; but this is the principal thing -what they should be with God. If they are not so with him as it ought to be, as they wish it to be, as they hoped it would be, everything else is like the chaff that the wind driveth away. And there are some who are saying, We have waited and we have watched and we have prayed, and nothing grows; after all our endeavours we see them turning back, turning aside following every folly- like the deaf adder, nothing charms them but sin, “charm we never so wisely.” errors will grow, and bad tempers will grow fast enough; but the growth of religious principles, of the seeds of truth sown in the youthful mind, depends upon Divine grace.

The grace that softened our hearts can soften the hearts of those who are dear to us, however hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. “Instead of the thorn may come up the fir tree and instead of the brier may come up the myrtle tree.” “although” at present “he maketh it not to grow.”