or affliction. To obtain the consolation which the text is suited to convey, it will be proper to consider,
I. What God has done for us already —
The description given of God's people is sufficiently appropriate, and will distinguish them from all other people upon earth. They " seek" the favour of " the Lord," and "follow after" it with incessant care in the way of " righteousness." But,
They once had little prospect of ever attaining to the blessings they enjoy —
[The Jewish nation was to descend from Abraham ; but the promised seed was not given him till, according to the course of nature, there was no probability that his family should be increased. There was then little reason to expect that that nation ever should exist. Thus the people of God may look back upon the time that they were lying as stones in a quarry, and as clay in a pit. How little prospect was there then, that they should ever form a part of God's spiritual building!" They were as blind, as stupid, as averse to God and holy exer- cises, as any people in the universe1*. If they " ran not to the same excess of riot" as others, they were restrained merely by the overruling providence of God, and not by any hatred of sin which they had more than others.]
Yet they are now " called and blessed" of the Lord —
[The descendants of Abraham rapidly increased, and in process of time formed a very numerous and powerful nation. Who that beheld them at their departure from Egypt would have imagined that, only four hundred years before, these two millions of people had no existence but in the loins of Abraham ? And who, that sees a person now " following after righteous- ness," would imagine that he was once a determined enemy to God, and had a nature as corrupt as any of his fellow-creatures? Let the saints remember what they were, that they may see what "great things the Lord has done for them:" let them "walk softly all the days of their life" under a sense of their former guilt ; and stand amazed at the goodness of their God, who has so distinguished them with his favour.]
Nor is this any thing more than an earnest of, II. What he has engaged to do —
b Rom. iii. 10 — 19. and viii. 7.