2. How to act under overwhelming calamities —
[Go not from God, but to him : and the greater sense you have of your necessities, be only so much the more urgent in your application to him. That you may be overwhelmed for a season, the prophet acknowledges : " for even the youths may faint and be weary, and the young men may utterly fall : but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk and not faintV Only " follow on to know the Lord ;" and you shall as surely behold the light of his countenance, as the sun shall return after the darkest nightc. " The vision, it is true, may tarry: but at its appointed season it shall come," and not disappoint the expectations of any creature in the universe who waiteth for itd.]
b Isai. xl. 29—31. c Hos. vi. 3. d Hab. ii. 3.
Ps. cxliv. 15. Happy is that people that is in such a case : yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.
TO inquiries after happiness, one answer only can be given. Every thing in the whole creation is forced to confess, " It is not in me, It is not in me." It can be found in God alone. The Psalmist's choice was the only one that could be made consistently with true wisdom : " There be many that say, Who will shew us any good! Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon usa." The same is the judgment which he gives us in the passage before us. We may, indeed, understand the text rather as expressive of the union between piety towards God, and the temporal blessings consequent upon it : for it is certain that, under that dispensation, God did confer temporal benefits on those who served him with fidelity : but, if understood as a corrective of the foregoing state- ment, it will more fully express the general sentiment of Scripture. The Psalmist, after describing a state of great national prosperity, says, " Blessed is that people that is in such a case :" and then, either in a way of confirmation, or of restriction, he adds, " Yea, blessed is that people whose God is the Lord."
a Ps. iv. 6.