Job 4:5

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"... it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled" Job 4:5

This is the same in all human experience. It is easy to carry the burdens of others. It may be quite delightful to speak to men who are suffering as to the way in which they should bear themselves in the hour of trial. He can best sympathise who has most suffered. It is one thing to see sorrow at a distance, and another to admit it into the innermost room in our own house and live within it night and day. These are the times, however, when we can show our true spiritual quality. So long as the affliction was at a distance we merely talked about it, but when it came near us we felt it, and under the agony of our feeling we showed what our souls were really trusting to. Well-borne trial is the finest argument that can be set up on behalf of the grace of God. The promises of Scripture are not so many jewels to be worn as a necklace; they are to be appropriated, and to become part of our very selves, giving us strength, patience, dignity, so that even the smell of fire shall not pass upon us when we go through the furnace of trial. He can preach best who has had largest experience, it may be even of ill-health, loss, disappointment, and bereavement. He also can read the Bible best who has passed through similar experience. Every trial that comes to Us furnishes an opportunity through which the soul can show the fulness of the grace of heaven. If Christian men fall down in trial, what are un-Christian men to think of them and of their faith? If the very sons and princes of God quail in the day of adversity as do other men, what, then, has their religion done for them? By their depression, their fear, their want of light and hope, they not only show their own nature, they actually bring discredit upon the very religion which they profess. How did such men come to take up with such a religion? What possible motive could they have for identifying themselves with a faith which, beyond all other faiths, is marked by heroic characteristics? Cowards must not be numbered with those who follow the banner of the brave. Some men have been greater in affliction than they have ever been in prosperity. Their friends did not know them as to their real quality until they were called upon to carry heavy burdens, and to be tried by perils in the city, and perils in the wilderness, and perils on the sea, and perils amongst false brethren, it was amidst such testing perils that the true quality of the spirit was disclosed, and that many a man who was thought timid and frail discovered himself to be a very giant in the family of God. There is another aspect of the case which enables us to address men who are sensitive themselves whilst encouraging other men to be noble and brave under assault. The men referred to exhort others not to take heed of neglect or insult or dishonour; they say those who suffer from such attacks ought to be above them, ought not to resent them, ought to treat them with moderation and perhaps with occasional contempt: but how is it when the very same attacks are made upon themselves? Then how energetic they are in repelling them, how sensitive to every unkind word, how strong in their self-love, how violent in their self-conceit! Example is better than precept. To exhort another man to be magnanimous is not half so good as to be magnanimous under trial of any kind.