The Grievous Consequences of the Loss of Spiritual Comfort

By JOHN COLQUHOUN, D.D., Minister of the Gospel, Leith.

By withholding spiritual consolation from the soul of any of His people, the Lord, in proportion as He doth it, is represented in the Scriptures as forsaking or deserting them. His forsaking of them, in respect of comforting influences, either in a less or greater degree is the same as His withdrawing of the sensible influences and tokens of His special favour from their souls; or, as it is often expressed in the Scripture, His hiding of His face from them. When He so forsaketh them, or so hideth the light of His gracious countenance from them, as to suspend, in any measure, His influences of comfort from their souls; they lose, in the same measure, that consoling sense of His special favour and love to them, which hitherto they usually enjoyed. The meaning of God’s hiding of His face from believers may, in some degree, be understood from the opposite phrases, of his “causing His face to shine upon them” and His “lifting up the light of His countenance upon them.” These phrases appear to carry in them an allusion to the shining forth of the Shechinah in the ancient Tabernacle and Temple; that is, of the glorious lustre, which dwelt in the cloud, as the visible token of Jehovah’s favour to the Israelites, and of that gracious Presence with them, which He was pleased, on some solemn occasions, peculiarly to manifest. There may also be in them an allusion to the pleasant appearance of the countenance of a friend, in a superior station of life, when he converses familiarly with an inferior, whom he regards with peculiar favour. Accordingly Job, when mentioning the regard shown him by his attendants, says, “If I laughed on them, or jested with them, they believed it not, and the light of my countenance they cast not down” (Job xxix. 24); as if he had said, “They were on an occasion so agreeable to them, solicitous to do nothing that would so displease me as to make me frown on them.” And when the Israelitish Church in captivity prayed to be restored to her former freedom, she said, “Cause Thy face to shine,

and we shall be saved” (Ps. lxxx. 3); that is, “Restore us to our former prosperity and thereby manifest to us Thy mercy and Thy favour.” On the other hand, God is said in Scripture to hide His face from His children, or not to cause His countenance to shine upon them; when, as a mark of His paternal displeasure with their evil conduct, He suspendeth for a season the wonted influences and tokens of His favour from their souls. Such forsaking, therefore, or suspension of spiritual comfort, though sometimes intended as a trial of their graces, yet is oftener designed by their heavenly Father as a grievous chastisement for their sins.

Now, the consequences of their loss of spiritual consolation are especially the following:—

1. Trouble and sorrow of spirit are consequences of it. “Thou didst hide Thy face,” saith David, “and I was troubled” (Ps. xxx. 7). And when he was driven from the Sanctuary of Jehovah, in which the visible symbol of His favour was placed, and where the manifestations of His favour were enjoyed, the soul of that holy man was cast down and disquieted in him (Ps. xlii. 5, 6). Indeed, when a saint hath, especially by his own aggravated folly, lost the sense of his peace with God, he cannot but be troubled; and when he hath forfeited the sense of his joy in God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, he cannot but be sorrowful. “In the favour of God is life” (Ps. xxx. 5). When, therefore, a holy man loses his perception of that favour, “the sorrows of death will more or less compass him, and the pains of hell will get hold upon him: he shall find trouble and sorrow” (Ps. exvi. 3). And the more he is insensibly upheld by sustaining and quickening influences the more troubled and grieved will he commonly be, for his loss of comforting influences. A prevailing persuasion of the favour of God in Christ, and of acceptance with Him, is the ordinary attainment of the saints in this world. “The Lord will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints” (Ps. lxxxv. 8). But when a saint forfeits the light of God’s gracious countenance and of holy comfort, he ordinarily at such a time loses all sight of his evidences of grace; and when he cannot discern in himself the smallest evidence of grace, or of his being an object of Divine favour, he cannot fail to be deeply dejected and troubled in spirit. The sensible departure of a good and gracious God from the holy soul is like the departure of the soul from the body—painful and dreadful. In other losses something still remains that is comfortable: when a believer loses his earthly friends, he hath still a heavenly Friend and Father, who is unchanging in His good will to him, and to whom he may always look for comfort; but when this gracious, this matchless Friend Himself is apprehended to be lost, how perplexing, how grievous, how overwhelming is the loss! The heaviest of other losses is light, is tolerable, in comparison of this (Prov. xviii. 14). No wonder if, in such a condition, the Christian take up Jeremiah’s mournful complaint, “When I would comfort myself

against sorrow, my heart is faint in me” (Jer. viii. 18). To lose the perception of the Saviour’s love to him is exceedingly distressing to a holy man. As all the candles in the world cannot make it day, when the sun is set, so all the comforts in the universe cannot cheer the heart of such a man in the absence of the Sun of righteousness. A holy soul is like the flower that opens and shuts with the sun: if the Saviour shine upon it, it opens; but if He withdraw the cheering light of His countenance it closes itself and droops. It is, however, a comforter not to be forgotten; that when the Lord Jesus leaves a believing soul, He forsakes it not wholly; but always leaves something behind Him in it which makes it long for His return. Were He to desert it wholly, it would cease to long for Him.

1. Piercing convictions, and frightful views, of their innumerable sins, in their heinousness and demerit, usually accompany this trouble of mind. In the darkness of night fire is more easily seen at a distance than in the light of day. When a holy man has lost the light of comfort and is walking in darkness he has usually a more clear and disquieting sight of his great transgressions than when he is walking in the light of consolation. The sin of his nature and the transgressions of his life are, in their deep malignity and dreadful demerit, then set in order before his eyes. The painful recollection of them, with their manifold aggravations, is revived in his mind; and they appear more horrible in his view than ever they did before. They are brought afresh to his painful remembrance, as if they had been committed but yesterday. Being set in array before him, each of them gives to his disconsolate spirit a new and a deep wound which increases the smart of his former wounds and makes them bleed afresh. They present themselves to his troubled mind with all their aggravations as having been committed against God and Christ, against redeeming love and grace, against the law and the gospel, against mercies and judgments, against the warnings of conscience and the motions of the Holy Spirit, and against the patience and forbearance of that gracious God who hath so loved him as to give His only begotten Son to die for him. Holy Job, when in such a condition, said, “Thou writest bitter things against me, and makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth” (Job xiii. 26). And David, “My sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight” (Ps. li. 3, 4). “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up: they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me” (Ps. xl. 12). Thus the backsliding believer is sent back again to Mount Sinai, where he finds the devouring flames of the fiery law flashing in his face. His convictions now are deeper, and his searchings hotter, than perhaps they ever were before. The Lord permitteth the tremendous curse of the violated law to re-enter his conscience, and thereby He shows him the awful demerit of his innumerable offences (Rom. v. 20). Perceiving

that he hath sinned in the midst of evangelical light, of frequent checks of conscience, of manifold mercies, enjoyments, enlargements, and experiences, he begins, it may be, to dread that he may have committed even the unpardonable sin. A sense of the horrible malignity and dreadful demerit of his transgressions strikes a deep impression on his soul and makes his heart to tremble. His conscience upbraids him with his criminal folly, and his base ingratitude in sinning against his gracious God and Saviour. Hence, cutting reflections, self-condemning and galling thoughts often disquiet his mind (Ps. lxxiii. 21, 22). He can now think almost of nothing, but the awful majesty, sovereignty, holiness, justice, and vengeance of the Lord. “He remembers God and is troubled” (Ps. lxxvii. 3). His spirit is troubled, yea, overwhelmed, when he reflects that he hath provoked the just, the omnipotent, the great and terrible God to appear as an enemy against him. Or, if he thinks at all of the mercy of God, he will be disposed to argue thus: “Surely, if my transgressions had not been peculiarly heinous, or if I had so much as a single spark of grace in me, an infinitely merciful God would not have thus forsaken me.” Ah! sin, committed against the high and holy Majesty of heaven, is a strange, a horrible thing! If the Lord should, at once, discover fully to the exercised Christian all the hideousness of this infernal monster, the discovery would be utterly intolerable to him.

(To be continued.)