A Vexed Soul Comforted, Job 27:2

It may be, too, that he is sending this trial to let you know that he thinks of you. “Ah!” you say, “I did not suppose that he thought of me; thought that surely he had forgotten such an one as I am.” But he does think of you, he has been thinking of you for many a day, and calling and inviting you to him, but you would neither listen nor obey; and now that he has come, he means to make you see that he loves you too well to let you be lost. You are having his blows right and left, to let you know that he thinks of you, and will not let you perish. When God does not care for a man, he flings the reins on to his neck, and says, “There! Let him go.” Now see how the horses tear away; you need not lash them, they will go as though they had wings, and could fly. Leave a man to himself, and his lusts drag him post haste to hell, he pants to destroy himself; but when God loves a man, he pulls him up, as you might pull your horse on to his haunches. He shall not do as he wills, the eternal God will not let him; in infinite mercy, he tugs at the rein, and makes the man feel that there is a mightier than he who will not let him ruin himself, But who will restrain him from rushing to his destruction. Am I speaking to any who are in this plight? Let them not kick against God, but rather be grateful that he condescends thus to meddle with their sinful souls, and check them in their mad career. I have spoken lately with some who were about to join this church, who, if friends had said, five or six months ago, that they would have been sitting on that chair talking to me about their souls, would have cursed them to their faces; yet they were obliged to come. The Lord had hold of them; they tried to break away, but he had them too firmly. They were served by my Lord and I, raster as a good fisherman will serve a salmon, if once it takes his bait; he lets it run for a while, and then pulls it up a bit, and then lets it go again; but he brings it to land at last; and I have had the pleasure of seeing many sinners thus safely caught by Christ. It may be, dear friend, that the Almighty is vexing you to let you see that he loves you.

May it not be also for another reason, — that he may wean you entirely from the world? He is making you loathe it. “Oh!” you used to say, “I am a young man, and I must see life.” Well, you have seen it, have you not? And do you not think that it is wonderfully like death and corruption? That which is called “London life” is a foul, loathsome, crawling thing, fit only for the dunghill. Well, you have seen it, and you have had enough of it, have you not? Perhaps your very bones can tell what you gained by that kind of life. “Oh!” you said, “but I must try the intoxicating cup.” Well, what did you think of it the morning after you tried it? “Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contention? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.” I saw a man of that kind in the street, the other day. Once, he was a most respectable man, who could consort with others, and be esteemed by them. Now he is dreadfully down at the heel. I think I saw a too through each of his shoes, and he looked like the wretched being that he is. He shuffled from place to place as if he did not wish to be seen, and he did not lift himself up until he got into the gin palace to take another draught of hell-water; and then he seemed for a minute to be drawn straight again by that which made him crooked. You know the man; is he here to-night? Dear sir, have you not had sufficient strong drink? God has let you have enough of it that you may hate it from this hour, and flee away from it, never to desire to go back to it again.

I heard, at Boulogne, the story of a Frenchman who had been drinking heavily, and who threw himself into the harbor. Some sailors plunged in, and rescued him. The man was on the deck of a ship, and in a minute he broke away from his keepers, and jumped in again. It was not pleasant to be trying to save a madman again and again, yet they did get him out, and took him down below; but he rushed on deck, and jumped in a third time. A man there said,” You leave him to me.” So he jumped overboard, and seized hold of him, put his head under the water, and held him there; when he managed to get his head up again, his rescuer gave him another ducking, and then another, till he just about filled him up with water. He said to himself, “I will sicken him of it, so that he will never jump in here again.” He just diluted the eau-de-vie the man had taken, and then he dragged him on board ship, and there was no fear of his jumping overboard any more. And I believe that, sometimes, the Lord acts like that with men. He did so with me; he made sin to be exceedingly bitter to my soul, till I loathed it; and it has often given me a trembling even to think of those sins that then were pleasurable to me. It is a blessed thing to be plucked out of the water, and saved once for all, but a little of that sailor’s style of sousing the drunkard, a little of those terrors and alarms that some of us felt, is not lost; and when the Lord thus deals with sinners, it is with the design that they may never want to go back to those sins any more. They have had their full of them, and henceforth they will keep clear of them. It may be that the Almighty vexed some of you for this cause, that you might thenceforth hate sin with a perfect hatred.

“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”