1. Relapses into sin —
[By far the greatest part of our sorrows originates here. A close and uniform walk with God is productive of peace: but declensions from him bring guilt upon the conscience, together with many other attendant evils. And if those professors of religion who complain so much of their doubts and fears, would examine faithfully the causes of their disquietude, they might trace it up to secret neglects of duty, or to some lust harboured and indulged ^
2. The temptations of Satan —
[Doubtless this wicked fiend is an occasion of much trouble to the people of God ; else his temptations had not been cha- racterized as " fiery darts V' which suddenly pierce and inflame the soul. We may judge in a measure how terrible his assaults are, when we see the Apostle, who was unmoved by all that man could do against him^, crying out with such agony and distress under the buffe tings of Satan**. We shall have a yet more formidable idea of them, if we consider that the Lord of glory himself, when conflicting with the powers of darkness, sweat great drops of blood from every pore of his body, through the agony of his soul. Can we wonder then if the saints are sometimes dejected through the agency of that subtle enemy?]
3. The hidings of God's face —
[We do not think that God often hides his face from men without some immediate provocation : but we dare not to say that he never does ; because he is sovereign in the disposal of his gifts; and because he withdrew the light of his countenance from Job without any flagrant transgression on the part of his servant to deserve it. It is scarcely needful to observe, how painful that must be to those who love God : our blessed Lord, who bore the cruelties of men without a complaint, was constrained to cry out bitterly under his dereliction from his heavenly Father, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " And certainly this is the most distressing of all events : " the spirit of a man, when strengthened from above, may sustain any infirmity; but a wounded spirit, wounded too by such a hand, who can bear*?"]
Having traced out the sources of dejection, let us inquire after,
n. The remedy —
The great remedy for every temporal or spiritual affliction is faith. This, and this alone, is adequate to our necessities. The efficacy of this principle for
f Eph, vi. 16. s Acts xx. 24.
i> 2 Cor. xii. 7, 8. • Prov. xviii. 14.