emotions ; but judge yourselves by the more certain test of a willing and unreserved obedience.]
3. To place an entire and uniform dependence on God—
[God may see fit to try us, and to delay the relief that we implore. But let us not entertain hard thoughts of him. From the time of Abraham it has passed into a proverb, that " in the mount the Lord shall be seen." Our Isaac may be bound, and the knife actually lifted up to inflict the fatal blow, and all who might interpose to rescue the victim may be at a great distance ; but, in the moment of need, God's voice from heaven shall arrest the murderous hand, and deliver us from the impending stroke. " The vision is yet for an appointed time ; therefore, though it tarry, wait for it : for at the ap- pointed season it shall come, and not tarry f." Whether our afflictions be of a temporal or spiritual, nature, we may rest assured of this blessed truth, that " they who wait on him shall never be confounded."]
f Hab. ii. 3.
Exod. xv. 26. / am the Lord that healeth thee.
SCARCELY had the Jews passed the Red Sea before they began to murmur : as the Psalmist has said, " They provoked him at the sea, even at the Red Seaa." True it was that they must have suffered greatly, both they and their cattle, when they were three days without water; and when, on rinding water, it was so bitter that they could not drink it. But, when they had been conducted thither by God himself, (for the pillar and the cloud never left them day or nightb,) they might be assured that He, who had so miraculously delivered them hitherto, would, if they cried unto him, supply their wants. They should have had recourse to prayer therefore, and not to murmuring. But this conduct of theirs gave occasion for a rich display of God's mercy towards them, and for an explicit declaration on his part what the rule of his procedure towards them in future should be. They were delivered from the Egyptian
a Ps. cvi. 7. b Exod. xiii. 22.