Grace Triumphant

Hu compassions... are new every morning; great is 7 );i’/ 2 ili. 22, 23.

Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah JL is very dolorous. When you look upon the dragons, and owls, the pelicans, and bitterns in the wilderness, you have a ht picture of his mournful state. He was full* of grief, like a bottle wanting vent. His heart was ready to burst with wormwood and with gall.

But the whole current changes when the prophet brings tO’ his remembrance the mercy of God. No sooner does he think of the compassion of the Most High than at once he takes his harp from the willows and begins to sing as sweetly as ever that sweet singer of Israel, David, sang before him. Truly, if we, too’, instead of harping upon our troubles, would but reflect upon our mercies, we should exchange our mournful ditties for songs of joy.

It is true that God’s people are a tried people; it is equally true that their grace is equal to their trials. Through much tribulation they enter the kingdom, but then they do enter, and the thought of the kingdom that is coming sustains them in their present tribulation. They wade through the waters of woe, often breast deep, but then the billows do not, and shall not, go over them; they shall still be able to sing even in the midst of the tempest. I would suggest to any here who are in the habit of complaining — a very bad habit — any who have become chronic murmurers — that this temper of mind is sinful, while, on the other hand, the remembrance of God’s mercy, and grateful talk about it, is a virtuous habit, one which is honourable to God, as well as strengthening and profitable to our own souls. Imitate Jeremiah, then, and if you can find no comfort in your present outward circumstances, meditate upon the unfailing mercies of God.

What a blessed word that is which the prophet here uses — ’ compassions! ’ David uses the word ‘pity’ more frequently, but he means the same thing. It is a humbling word, though exceedingly consolatory. I have often felt very deeply chastened in my own soul at that text ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.’ What! is this the Lord’s attitude to the strongest and the best of saints? Does God only pity them? Yes, it is even so: Those that do exploits, those that lead the van in the day of battle, those to whom we look up to with respect and admiration, God looks upon with infinite love, but that love still takes the form of pity. He can see their weakness where we see their strength; He can discover their defects where we admire the work of the Holy Spirit in them, and He regards them with pity. Yet it is a father’s pity, a father who smiles at the weakness of the child, knowing that the attempt which it is making, though a feeble one, will educate it for soniething better; foreseeing that it will by-and-by outgrow its wealcness, and be able to do greater things.

God has compassion for the best of His people, but it is compassion prompted by love. It is not the pity that is akin to scorn, but the pity which melts from love, as the honey drops from the honeycomb. I would again ask our dear friends who are tried and troubled, to think of the infinite pity of God towards them. He has smitten you, but still not as hard as He might have done; out of pity He has stayed His hand. He has spoken sharply in your conscience, but if He had spoken as loudly there as your sins deserved there would have been thunder-claps instead of admonitions.

He has withered your gourds, but if He had done what justice might have demanded it would not have been the gomrd that withered, but you, yourself, would have withered away. Admire the compassion of God! If one child in your family is sick, they are not all sick; if He has taken away one friend by death, there are friends still left; you have had heavy losses, but you are not a bankrupt; you are not in good health, but still you have not been stricken with the diseases which have attacked some others; your pain is bearable. It is true the weather is dull and heavy to your spirit, but it is not quite the blackness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Take heart even in the midst of smitings, for the compassion of God is still to be seem

Moved by such thoughts as these, the prophet penned the remarkable words before us: — ‘His compassions are new every morning; gi’eat is Thy faithfulness.^

I have been admiring the first part of the sentence which suggests toi me the novelties of divine mercy, and as I speak of it I mean to get you to preach to yourselves, to wake up your recollections, to ask you to turn over a few pages in your old pocket-books, to make you look at your diaries, and remember what God has done for you since you knew His name.

I God’s mercies are always novelties.

They are new every morning. The water that is in the cistern may be sufficient for a long time, but if it is stored it will not be fresh. It might have been fresh the first morning that I drew it, but it will not be fresh on the morrow, and the longer it lasts the more stagnant will it become. But the water from the spring-head is always new. I drank of it when a boy; I go to it in the prime of manhood; I stoop to drink of it when my hair turns grey, and still it is new and sparkling. God is not the cistern, but the fountain. Our treasures which we lay up on earth are the stagnant pools, but the treasure which God gives us from heaven, in providence and in grace, is the crystal fount which wells up from the eternal deeps, and is always fresh and always new. There axe no grey hairs upon the Angel of Mercy; no wrinkles upon His brow. I may say of Him what the sweet writer of Solomon’s Song says of the spouse: — ‘His locks are bushy and black as a raven.’ Mercy is of old, and is for ever God’s darling attribute, yet it is always bright, and fair, and clear, and young. Mercy is not a tree that yields but once in the year its fruit, which may be stored through the depths of winter, and preserved till, perhaps, it shall have become rotten; Mercy is the tree of life, which beareth its fruit every month. At all times and at all seasons we may share the compassion of God and we shall find that it is new every morning.

The thought that God’s mercy is always new is a pleasing one, but that it is new every morning is very wonderful. If you had to preach you would find it noi small difficulty to have something new every Sunday, but God has something new for us every morning. I suppose the writers in our newspapers often have to vex and agitate their brains to get us something new, but God, with the greatest of ease, sends to the millions of His people something new every morning. He does not need to repeat Himself. If He sends the same mercy, yet there is a something about it which shows it to be fresh. God never gives us old money that has been worn, His mercy always comes fresh from the mint with all the gloss and all the brightness of new coinage. His compassions are new every morning, not some mornings, but every morning, from the first of January to the last of December. God never has to stay His hand. He never has to pause to think of something fresh, but His mercies come to us freely, spontaneously — new every morning. Let us think a little of it

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