A Gracious Condition
What a blessed motto and superscription over the dark lintels of sorrow! — “If need BE!” Every arrow from the quiver of God is feathered with it! Write it, Child of affliction, over every trial thy God sees meet to send! K he calls thee down from the sunny mountain-heights to the darksome glades, hear Him saying, ‘’ There is a need Z?e.” If he have dashed the cup of earthly prosperity from thy lips, curtailed thy creature comforts, diminished thy “basket and thy store,” hear Him saying, “There is a need 5e.” If He has ploughed and furrowed thy soul with severe bereavement — extinguished light after light in thy dwelling — hear Him thus stilling the tumult of thy grief —” There is a need he
Yes! believe it, there is some profound reason for thy trial, which at present may be undiscernible. No furnace will be hotter than He sees to be needed. Sometimes, indeed. His teachings are mysterious. We can with difficulty spell out the letters, God is hvel — we can see no “bright light” — no luminous Bow in “our Cloud.” It is all mystery; not one break is there in the sky! ISTay! ‘’ Hear what God the Lord doth speak” — ‘’ If need 5e.” He does not long leave His people alone, if He sees the chariot-wheels dragging heavily. He will take His own means to sever them from an absorbing love of the world — to pursue them out of self — and dislodge usurping clay-idols that may have vaulted on the throne which He alone may occupy. Before thy present trial He may have seen thy love waxing cold — thy influence for good lessening. As the sun puts out the fire, the sun of earthly prosperity may have been extinguishing the fires of thy soul — thou mayest have been shining less brightly
for Christ — effecting some guilty compromise 2^ with an insinuating and seductive world. Eg has appointed the very discipline and dealing needful; — nothing else — nothing less could have done!
Be still, and know that He is God! That “need 5e,” remember, is in the hands of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power. Trust Him in little things as well as in great things — in trifles as well as in emergencies. Seek to have an unquestioning faith. Though other paths, doubtless, would have been selected bj thee had the choice been in thy hands, be it thine to listen to His voice at every turn of the road, saying. This is the way, walk ye in it
We may not be able to understand it now — but one day we shall come to find, that Affliction is one of God’s most blessed angels; — a ministering spirit, “sent forth to minister to them who are heirs of salvation.” There would be no Bow in the material heaven but for the Cloud! Lovelier, indeed, to the eye, is the azure blue — the fleecy summer vay)or.v — or the gold and vermillion of western sun-Bets. But what would become of the eaith if no dark clouds from time to time hung over It; distilling their treasures — reviving and refreshing its drooping vegetable tribes?
Is it otherwise with the soul? Nay. The cloud of sorrow is needed. Its every rain-drop has an inner meanixig of love I If, even now, afflicted one, these clouds are gathering, and the tempest sighing, lift up thine eye to the divine scroll gleaming in the darkened heavens, and remember that He who has put the Bow of promise there, saw also a “need ?>e” for tha tloud on which it rests!