[The " hands and feet" being those members of the body that are fitted for labour, they not improperly represent the active powers of the soul : and the feebleness which they ex- perience through excessive fatigue, gives us a just idea of a soul weary with its labours, and heavy laden with its spiritual burthens. Many there are that are precisely in this state : they have been maintaining a conflict with sin and Satan ; they have been enduring the pressure of many trials ; and they scarcely know how to support their difficulties any longer : their " hands are so weak and their knees so feeble," that they are ready to give up in utter despair13 ]
2. As discouraged by reason of it —
[Many are the misgiving thoughts that arise in the minds of God's tempted people. When they find their insufficiency to support their burthens, and to overcome their spiritual enemies, they have " great searchings of heart:" they begin to doubt whether they have not altogether deceived their own souls ; and whether they may not as well cease from those contests which they have hitherto found so ineffectual. They fear that God has cast them off; that all their professions are mere hypocrisy ; and that their renewed exertions will only issue in their greater disappointment c ]
If there be any present, whose experience accords with this description, we proceed to,
II. Deliver to them a message from the most high God- God would not that his ministers should ever " break a bruised reed," or " despise the day of small things :" on the contrary, he says, " Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." " Strengthen the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees." But, because we should be at a loss to know what to say, and all that we could say would be to no purpose, if it were the mere offspring of our own imaginations, God himself has put words into our mouths ; which there- fore we may safely, and confidently, deliver.
[Let the drooping and disconsolate now listen as to the voice of God himself; for it is God, and not man, that thus audibly speaks unto them.
" Be strong, fear not." This may appear a strange address to those who feel within themselves such reason for despondency :
,5 This may be illustrated by David's case, Ps. xxxviii. 2 — 8, 17. c Ps. lxxvii. 2 — 9.