By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, D.D., Minister of the Gospel, Leith (1813).
(Continued from Vol. lviii., page 358.)
4. They procure for themselves the loss of spiritual comfort by discontent and impatience, arising from the inordinate love of some earthly comfort.
When a good man, instead of placing all his happiness and all his hope in Christ and in God as his God and portion, places much of them in some external comfort, so as to be disposed often to say, “What would become of me or How uncomfortable should I be were it not for this comfort!” he thereby provokes the Lord, who is always more ready to profit than to please his children, to tear the idol from his embrace (Ezek. xxxvi. 25). If he begins to “make gold his hope and to say to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence” (Job xxxi. 24); or if “he trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, so that his heart departeth from the Lord, he shall,” under the chastening of his Heavenly Father, be for a season “like the heath in the desert and shall not see when good cometh but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited” (Jer. xvii. 5, 6). “The broken reed on which he leaneth” will not only fail him “but will go into his hand and pierce it.” His comforts will be diminished: his hopes will be disappointed: his schemes will one after another be frustrated. His idol, whatever it be, will either be torn from him or be turned into a source of daily vexation to him. The Lord will break his cisterns and send a worm to his gourds. “For the iniquity of his covetousness,” saith Jehovah, “was I wroth and smote him; I hid me and was wroth and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart” (Isa. lvii. 17). The inordinate and immoderate love of any temporal benefit doth upon the loss of that benefit commonly produce discontent, impatience and fretfulness, which have a natural tendency to wear down the spirit. Were the Christian to bear his loss of outward comforts in the exercise of faith and of resignation to the holy will of God he should still continue to experience inward consolation. But when he presumes to fret and murmur, as if the Lord had wronged him, or had been unkind to him, saying, “Alas! my afflictions are very uncommon, are peculiarly severe,” he thereby procures for himself, in addition to his outward losses, the loss of inward consolation. Such a behaviour as this forms a combination of various sins, all of which are inconceivably heinous and exceeding sinful. Discontent inclines a man to be impatient under afflictions; discontent and impatience set his mind as on the rack and torment it with distracting cares, how to be delivered or how to have his loss retrieved: the secret root of these is an inordinate love of the body, and of worldly enjoyments (James iv. 4): this again arises from a want of due resignation to the holy will of God and of satisfaction with Him alone as an all-sufficient portion for the whole man (Ps. cxli. 5); and it is usually attended with much disbelief and distrust of His promise. The Lord, in His gracious promise, saith to every believer, “There shall no evil befall thee” (Ps. xci. 10). “No,” says the fretful Christian, “this which has befallen to me is evil; otherwise I should not have been disquieted by it.” But should it not, on the contrary, even delight the Christian to find that the Lord is drawing off provision from his worldly lusts? Knowing that he must shortly die, ah! why is he so fond of temporal and transitory enjoyments? Why so anxious to acquire them; so eager to embrace them; so disquieted by the loss of them?
Believer, thy Covenant-God is all-sufficient for thee; and He alloweth thee to call Him thine. Why then dost thou go a begging to creatures for supply? Consider that it is a much greater felicity to desire nothing earthly but what thou hast, than to have all that thou desirest. Do not any more provoke the Lord by obstinate or sullen grief for any outward loss, “lest a worse thing come upon thee.” Then only are thou in a right frame, when God in Christ is enough for thee. Know that it is in the absence or contempt of earthly comforts that the Holy Spirit is most a Comforter. Remember that God is never to be blamed for depriving thee of things which would carry away thy heart from Himself as thy sure and all-sufficient portion. Let not thy life, even for a moment, be bound up in any worldly enjoyment. O “take heed and beware of covetousness”—it is idolatry; and “their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god” (Ps. xvi. 4).
5. They lose their spiritual comfort by entertaining vain thoughts.
By vain thoughts I mean empty, frivolous, foolish, unprofitable, groundless, proud, ostentatious, deceitful, impure, and revengeful thoughts, as also wandering thoughts in prayer and in other religious exercises (Eph. vi. 18; James v. 16). These thoughts and such as these are vain: they are contrary to the holy law of God, and they exalt themselves against it. “I hate vain thoughts,” says the holy Psalmist, “but Thy law do I love” (Ps. exix. 113). Now when a believer, instead of hating and repelling vain thoughts, suffers them to lodge within him (Jer. iv. 14); when he entertains them, and allows them to continue unresisted in his heart he thereby provokes the displeasure of his Heavenly Father. The mind of the Christian should always be well furnished with proper subjects of thought and should habitually exercise itself upon them. Thus, under the influences of the Holy Spirit, it will be secured against the frequent incursion of a multitude of vain thoughts which otherwise will consume much of his precious time, defile his conscience, and expose him sooner or later to a multitude of perplexing, solicitous, and sorrowful thoughts (Ps. xciv. 19). Nothing but the frequent exercise of true faith and repentance will commonly prevent, in such cases, his sin from being inscribed in legible characters on his chastisement. His vain thoughts, if entertained, will procure for him perplexing and uncomfortable thoughts. David experienced much perplexity of conscience in consequence of his vain thoughts and prayed earnestly that the Lord would “cleanse him from secret faults” (Ps. xix. 12). The Christian, if he would retain his holy comfort, must “keep his heart with all diligence” (Prov. iv. 23); he must watch his thoughts, strictly and constantly, as well as his words and his actions: it will be necessary that he walk circumspectly in secret as well as in public. If he suffer himself to indulge empty and proud thoughts he will grieve the Holy Spirit of God (Eph. iv. 30), and provoke Him to withhold influences of consolation from his soul. Believer, if thou wouldst keep up the comfort of communion with a holy God, trust in the Lord Jesus at all times for sanctifying grace, to enable thee daily to mortify the members of the body of sin in thy heart. Suffer not thy thoughts to wander in prayer or in any other act of devotion. When thou art about to pray, consider on the one hand the greatness and variety of thy wants, and on the other the omniscience and holiness of Jehovah, to whom thou art to send up thy supplications; who hath said that He “will be sanctified in them that come nigh him.” Guard especially in secret prayer against coldness and indifference. If vain thoughts, intruding in acts of Divine worship, be not entertained, but on the contrary, be hated, resisted and lamented by thee, they will seldom be permitted to rob thee of thy spiritual comfort. But if thou love them or yield to them, or suffer them quietly to lodge within thee, they will soon occasion such a mist of darkness in thy soul that thou shalt not be able to discern the graces which dwell there.
6. Believers procure for themselves the loss of holy comfort by mistaking blasphemous and other evil thoughts injected by Satan for sins of their own.
Satan sometimes, in a way of furious assault, throws in suddenly and swiftly upon the souls of many of the saints temptations to blasphemous, atheistical, impure, revengeful and despairing thoughts. Such horrible injections are by the Apostle Paul termed “the fiery darts of the wicked one” (Eph. vi. 16), because, like the sharp and envenomed darts of a cruel enemy flying swiftly and invisibly they penetrate the soul before it is aware, and hurry it on, to hard and blasphemous thoughts of God and of the Saviour. These violent and sudden temptations, like impoisoned darts, pierce and inflame the holy soul with anguish and horror; and they not only fill it with the greatest uneasiness but if they for a moment be yielded to they produce the most unbecoming suspicions of the grace and the Word of God (Ps. lxxvii. 7, 8, 9). Blasphemous and atheistical thoughts do indeed arise often from the depravity that remains in believers themselves, for our Lord saith, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts . . . blasphemies” (Matt. xv. 19). When exercised Christians do not resist, but on the contrary, yield to blasphemous and other evil thoughts, they ought in that case to consider them as arising out of their own hearts, and to charge themselves with them as sins of their own. But if such thoughts strike their minds violently and suddenly (Matt. xvi. 22, 23), if their being assaulted with them vexes and grieves them (Ps. lxxii. 21, 22), and if their souls tremble at them and with deep abhorrence resist them (Ps. lxxiii. 15), they ought then not to charge them upon themselves as their sins, but upon Satan as his. Now, it is because believers do not, as they ought, distinguish between these blasphemous and evil thoughts, which are injected by the devil, and those which proceed from their own hearts, that they are often so imposed on by Satan as to mistake the former for sins of their own, and so to be deprived of the consolation which in the gospel is allowed them. There is a great difference, indeed, between a man’s being tempted to blaspheme or to doubt the truth of the Divine testimony, and his being actually guilty of blasphemy or of doubting the truth of Scripture. It is only by his complying with temptation that he becomes guilty. Believer, thou hast much reason to be thankful if thou hast not been left to take pleasure in those suggestions or to frame arguments in support of them. Satan may be permitted to overpower for a moment the apparent exercise of every grace in thee by a torrent of blasphemous imaginations, but “resist him and he will flee from thee” (James iv. 7). “Take the shield of faith.” Trust that the Lord Jesus, thy Saviour and thy shield (Ps. xxviii. 7) will graciously enable thee “to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one,” and, according to thy faith, it will be unto thee. All Satan’s attempts to hurry thee into sin shall be as effectually disarmed of their force by that shield as fire is of its strength by being quenched. To distrust thy Almighty Redeemer or to doubt that thou art not a true believer because thou art thus harassed by Satan is a much greater sin than all his suggestions put together, however numerous they may be.
(To be continued.)