Nor is this any singular experience. It is by such sudden and unsettling providences yet that God reveals us to ourselves. The strain of the storm makes manifest the weak point in the vessel, and stirs up the mariner to have it strengthened. So the tension of trial shows where the character is defective; and if we wisely learn the lesson, we will seek at once to have it renewed. How often has the careless sinner been aroused, first to agony and then to conversion, by the coming on him of some unlooked-for calamity! Had things continued to go smoothly and prosperously with him, his conscience would have slumbered on, and no salvation would have been sought by him; but trouble has revealed need, and need has impelled to prayer; and the answer to the prayer has been the new and higher life of the soul. Thus unbroken prosperity is not by any means a blessing to the sinner. The Psalmist has put this thought most suggestively when he says of some, "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God;" and, in the same connection we all remember that Jeremiah says of Moab, "He hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity: therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed." An English poet has said that "we rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things;" but only by calamity such as that which came upon this woman are our evil selves revealed and slain; that is, if we learn its lesson rightly. Therefore, to those who improve it properly, beneath the rough and outer rind of the trial there is a kernel of sweet and wholesome nutriment. But remember: to have the blessing, we must renounce the evil which the calamity reveals, and turn from it unto the Lord. How has it been with you, my brethren, when these unsettlements have come upon you? Have you been benefited by them? Have they drained off from you the lees of iniquity in which you had been settling? Happy they who have been shaken out of themselves, no matter at what cost, if only they have found the Lord! But if we have refused to learn from God's dislodging dealings with us, we may expect yet heavier sorrows; and if these be disregarded, then, heaviest of all, we may prepare for everlasting doom. You know how you shuddered before God as he came to you in your earthly trial; but if that were so, how will you stand aghast as you meet him before his awful throne of judgment! In mercy God has sent these minor trials before the last and severest of all, that from the knowledge of ourselves which they have given us we may be stirred up to prepare for that which is still before us. But if we could not endure the lighter, how shall we bear the heavier? "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?"* Notice, thirdly, that these unsettling providences only furnish the believer with a new errand to God's throne of grace. Behold how calm Elijah was all through this trying season! He felt the child's death keenly: deeply, too, he felt the mother's recrimination; yet he is not shaken out of his faith by the shock. Nay, rather his confidence in God is only stimulated to new boldness, as he carries the body up to his chamber, and beseeches God that the soul may come into it again. Our affliction is sanctified to us when it sends us more earnestly to our knees. Had Elijah been moved to say, "To what purpose is all my earnestness in Jehovah's service, if those who befriend me are to be thus distressed?" or had * Jeremiah xii., 5. But when, in the hour God, we have a new he determined that he would abjure his allegiance to Jehovah, then he would have shown that his zeal had not been rightly rooted or deeply cherished. of his perplexity, he goes straight to proof of the genuineness of his piety. goes first in the hour of sorrow and unsettlement, and I will tell you his character. You can not hesitate about Hezekiah's piety, when you see him spread Rabshakeh's letter before the Lord; you can have no doubt about that of Nehemiah, when you read of his praying to God while yet his master's cup was in his hand; nor can you have any uncertainty about that of Paul, when you observe that his thorn in the flesh sent him to his Lord. Whither did you go in trouble? On whom did you call for deliverance? To whom did you cling for support? Answer these questions honestly, and you will know whether or not you are the children of God; and if haply you find that you are not yet numbered among his sons, give no sleep to your eyes until you have secured the priceless blessing of adoption through faith in Him who died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. Finally, observe that the deliverance which God gives to his people in the time of their unsettlement, and in answer to their prayers, leads them to a more assured confidence in himself. This woman had a firmer faith in Elijah than ever after she had received her son alive at his hands; but Elijah himself had more confidence than ever in his God. Indeed, if we will consider it rightly, we shall see that it was by such experiences as this that Jehovah was training his servant up to that sublimity of faith and courage which he evinced on Mount Carmel, when he confronted Ahab and the priests and prophets of Baal. You perhaps at first are disposed to marvel at the boldness of the proposals which he made that day. I confess I have often done so ; but now, when I think of his bearing on that memorable occasion, in its connection with the antecedent incidents in his history, my wonder disappears. Elijah would not have dared to make such proposals to Ahab, or to offer such prayers to Jehovah as he then did, had it not been for the fact that God had heard and answered prayers of similar boldness which he had already presented. It was easy for him to ask fire to come down and consume his sacrifice, after he had seen God restore a dead child to life in response to his entreaty. Take his procedure on Carmel by itself, apart from all the other chapters in his life, and it does seem marvelously strange; but look at it as the last and highest of a series of experiences of the power of prayer, and it seems perfectly natural. By the triumphs of his former faith he had ascended to that confidence which he manifested on the great occasion which proved to be the highest tide-mark of his career. But it has been so with all the great ones in the peerage of faith. Look at Abraham; and as you see him ascending Moriah to sacrifice his son, you wonder at the calm sublimity of his heroic obedience. You think it almost superhuman. You can not understand how he attained to it. But when you go back over his previous history, the whole thing is explained. He could not have reached this altitude by one bounding leap, but by all those unsettlements and trials which came upon him from the day when he left the far land of Ur; and by the grace which brought him through them all, God had led him up, step by step, to this last and terrible ordeal, which was also his crowning triumph. His experience, oft repeated, and each time with added elements of grace, of God's faithfulness on occasions of necessity, enabled him to overcome in that supreme moment of uttermost extremity. So, again, with Paul. Look at his calmness as, confronting death, he said, "I am now ready to be offered,” and you will find that it is the natural result of the experiences of his life. In his many perils Jesus had been beside. him. Amidst the dangers that beset him in Corinth; in the prison at Jerusalem; on the deck of the drifting ship, ere yet it went to pieces on the Maltese shore; before magistrates and judges and imperial governors, Christ had been his faithful friend, and had fulfilled to him his word of promise. Therefore he could trust him thoroughly once more, and say, "I know whom I have believed." Thus, while unsettlements reveal the soul to itself, they also reveal the Saviour to the soul; and he who has been supported through them by his grace in the past can look forward with calm assurance to the future, feeling that every thing will be well. The God who, in answer to prayer, did not refuse to restore the child to life, would not, Elijah was sure, leave him dishonored before Baal's priests on Carmel; and he who has been with us in the checkered scenes of life will not forsake us when we come to die. Each new deliverance he gives us is a new stimulus to faith; and the more numerous such experiences are, the more heroic does our faith become. The result is glorious, though some stages of the process may be bitter. This now I know" of the woman, in its clear assurance, was worth the agony of the trial through which she attained it; and while we are feeling the heaviness of calamity, we may solace ourselves with the thought that our experience under it will remain with us, for stimulus and support, through every after-affliction. Thus the riddle of Manoah's son repeats itself. In the carcass of the slain lion there is a precious honey-comb. "Out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of the bitter comes forth sweetness." |