from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." " Where- fore," says he, " is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul ; who long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures ? There the prisoners rest together ; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master^." In trvith, almost all the suicides of which we hear originate in worldly sorrow, either personal or domestic : nor is it always found that piety itself is sufficient to counterbalance the effects of temporal calamity ; so as to elevate the spirits which have been broken by it, and restore the constitution that has been destroyed.]
2. From spiritual troubles — [Of these, none can judge, but those who have endured them. In reference to these it may well be said, " The spirit of man may sustain his infirmities ; but a wounded spirit who can bear^?" Truly, when a man is bowed down under a sense of sin, and trembling under apprehensions of God's wrath, he may well be dejected, and wish for any thing which may pacify his fears and terminate his sorrows. Great as Job's other troubles were, this was heavier than them all. Hear his com- plaint under it : " O that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! for now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea : therefore my words are swallowed up. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit : the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. O that I might have my request ! that God would grant me the thing that I long for, even that it would please God to destroy me''!" Terrible, beyond measure, are the hidings of God's face under such circumstances : so at least David felt them to be : " Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps : thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Lord, why castest thou off my soul ? why hidest thou thy face from me ? I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up : while I suffer thy terrors, I am distracted*^." So it is with some at this time ; they go mourning all the day long; and by their anticipations of God's wrath, feel almost the commencement of it in their souls. The Saviour himself deprecated this bitter cup, and complained of the hidings of God's face in his extremity: well, therefore, may frail men, who are crushed before the moth, implore " the staying of God's rough wind in the day of his east wind^."]
Seeing, then, that the wish of David is common in the world, let us inquire,
'1 Job iii. 17 — 21. ^ Prov. xviii. 14. = Job vi. 2, 3, 4, 8, 9.
d Ps. Ixxxviii, 7, 8, 14, 15. ^ Isai, xxvii. 8.