Reader! if He be afflicting you as He did David;--if with an exile spirit you be roaming some moral wilderness, the flowers of earth faded on your path, and the bleak winds of desolation and calamity sweeping and sighing around, let these times of affliction lead to deep searchings of heart. Let your tears be as the dewdrops of the morning on the tender leaves, causing you to bend in lowly sorrow and self-abasement, only to be raised again, refreshed, to inhale new fragrance in the summer sun. If, like the weeping woman of Galilee, you are saying, through blinding tears, "_They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him_," --if, like the Spouse in the Canticles, you are going about the city in search of your Beloved;--seeking Him, He will be found of you. The watchmen may smite you--repel you--tear off your veil--and load you with reproaches;--but "_fear not! ye seek Jesus who was crucified!_" He will meet you as He did the desponding Magdalene, and, listening like her to His own tones of ineffable love, you will cast yourself at His feet, and exclaim, "RABBONI--MASTER!"
"He wounds, and hides the hand that gave the blow; He flies, He reappears, and wounds again; Was ever heart that loved thee treated so? Yet I adore Thee, though it seem in vain."
"Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none."--_Ps._ lxix. 7, 8, 20.
"My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?"--_Verse 3._
The Great Accuser of the brethren in a variety of ways attempts to insinuate the same dark doubts in the minds of believers, which we have spoken of in the preceding pages. He tries to shake their confidence in God,--in the veracity of His word, and the faithfulness of His dealings. He would lead them to discover in His providential dispensations what is inconsistent with His revealed character and will. In seasons particularly of outward calamity and trouble, when the body is racked with pain, its nerves unstrung, or its affections blighted and wounded--when the mind is oppressed and harassed, the soul in darkness--the Prince of this world, who times his assaults with such consummate skill, not unfrequently gains in such seasons a temporary triumph. The shadow of a cold scepticism passes over the soul. It is silent under the cry, "_Where is thy God?_"