Friends often prove as the ' reed of Egypt, as a broken staff,' Ezek. xxix. G, * and as a deceitful brook,' Job vi. 15, that fails the weary passenger in summer time, when there is most need of refreshing ; and it is the imhap- piness of men, otherwise happy in the world, that dming their prosperous condition, they know not who be their friends ; for when their condition declines, it plainly appears, that many were friends of their estates, and not of their persons. But when men will know us least, God will know us most. He knows our souls in adversity, and knows them so as to support and comfort them, and that from the spring-head of comfort, whereby the sweetest comforts are fetched. What God conveyed before by friends, that he doth now instil immediately from himself. The immediate comforts are * In Margin, ' Amaziah.'
240 THE soul's conflict.
the strongest comforts. Our Saviour Christ told his disciples, that they would ' leave him alone ; yet, saith he, I am not alone, but the Father is with me,' John xvi. 32. At St Paul's first appealing ' all forsook him, but the Lord stood by him,' 2 Tim. iv. 16. He wants no company that hath Christ for his companion. Solus non est cui Christus comes est. — Cypr[ian.] ' I looked for some to take pity,' saith David, ' but there was none, Ps. Ixix. 20. This unfaithfulness of man is a foil to set out God's truth, who is never nearer than when trouble is nearest. There is not so much as a shadow of change in him or his love.
It is just with God when we lay too much weight of confidence upon any creature, to let us have the greater fall. Man may fail us .and yet be a good man, but God cannot fail us and be God, because he is truth itself. Shall God be so true to us, and shall not we be true to him and his truth ?
The like may be said in the departure of our friends. Our life is oft too much in the life of others, which God takes unkindly. How many friends have we in him alone ! who rather than we shall want friends, can make our enemies our friends. A true beUever is to Christ as his mother, brother, and sister, 'because he carries that afiiection to them, as if they were mother, brother, and sister, to him indeed. Mat. xii. 50. As Christ makes us all to him, so should we make him all in all to ourselves. If all comforts in the world were dead, we have them still in the living Lord.
Sicknesses are harbingers of death, and in the apprehension of many they be the greatest troubles, and tame great spirits, that nothing else could tame. Herein we are more to deal with God than with men, which is one comfort sickness yieldeth above other troubles. It is better to be troubled with the distempers of our own bodies, than with the distempers of other men's souls ; in which we have not only to deal with men, but with the devil himself, that ruleth in the humoui's of men.
The example of Asa, 2 Chron. xvi. 12, teaches us in this case not to lay too much trust upon the physician, but with Hezekiah first look up to God, and then use the means, 2 Kings xix. 14, 15. If God will give us a quietus est, and take us off from business by sickness, then we have a time of serving God by patient subjection to his will. If he means to use our service any further, he will restore our health and strength to do that work he sets us about. Health is at his command, and sickness stays at his rebuke. In the mean, the time of sickness is a time of purging from that defilement we gathered in our health, till we come purer out ; which should move us the rather willingly to abide God's time. Blessed is that sickness that proves the health of the soul. We are best, for the most part, when we are weakest, Optimi sumus dum ivfirmi sumus. Then it appears what good proficients we have been in time of health.
Carnal men are oft led along by false hopes suggested by others, and cherished by themselves, that they shall live still and do well till death comes and cuts ofl' their vain confidence and their life both at once, before ever they are acquainted what it is to trust in God aright, in the use of means. We should labour to learn of St Paul in desperate cases, to re- ceive the sentence of death, and not to trust in ourselves, but in God ' that raiseth the dead,' 2 Cor. i. 9. He that raiseth our dead bodies out of the grave, can raise our diseased bodies out of the bed of sickness, if he hath a pleasure to serve himself by us.
In all kind of troubles, it is ,not the ingredients that God puts into the cup so much afllicts us, as the ingredients of our distempered passions mingled with them. The sting and core of them aU is sin. When that is
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