I. WHAT THERE IS IN THESE "EMPTYINGS" THAT FITS THEM TO PROMOTE OUR SPIRITUAL ADVANCEMENT.

1. Such dispensations have in them an influence which is well calculated to reveal us to ourselves. Sudden emergency is a sure opener of a man's eyes to his own defects. He may contrive to get on, in seasons of prosperity and outward calm, without becoming conscious of the weak points of his character; but let him be thrown, all at once, upon his own resources by the coming upon him of some crushing calamity, and he will then find out whether he has that within him that can stand the strain that has been put upon him. It was a shrewd remark of Andrew Fuller, that "a man has only as much religion as he can command in the day of trial"; and if he have no religion at all, his trouble will make that manifest to him. Just as the strain of the storm tells where the ship is weakest, and stirs up the mariner to have it strengthened there, so the pressure of trial reveals the defects of character which still adhere to the Christian. One affliction may disclose an infirmity of temper; another may discover a weakness of faith; a third may make it evident that the power of some old habit is not yet entirely broken; and thus, from this constant revelation to him of the evils that still remain in him, he is led, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, to the attainment of a higher measure of holiness than other-wise he could have reached.

2. The frequent unsettlements which come upon us in God's providence have a tendency to shake us out of ourselves. We find that where we thought ourselves wise we have been supremely foolish. Where we imagined that we had taken all possible contingencies into the account, we discover that we had left no place for God. So our most matured schemes have been abortive, our most cherished hopes have been blasted; yea, just when we conceived that now at length we had reached our ultimatum, and were beginning to congratulate ourselves on the prospect of repose, there came a sudden reverse, which emptied us out again, and we were compelled to begin anew. Thus we are brought to distrust ourselves. We find that it will not do to "lean" always "to our own understanding." By many bitter failures we are made to acknowledge that "it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps," and then by the Spirit of God we are led up to confidence in Jehovah. We have heard enough of the success of the millionaire; let us hear more now of the success of the unsuccessful — yea, of the success of soul that sometimes comes through the ruin of earthly fortune and the blighting of our fondest plans. Character is nobler than riches or position, and the growth of that in holiness and stability ought to be the highest aim, as it will be the noblest achievement of life.

3. These frequent unsettlements have a tendency to keep us from being wedded to the world, or from thinking of rooting ourselves permanently here. Some years ago, while rambling with a friend in the neighbourhood of Windermere, we came upon a house surrounded by the most beautiful shrubs I ever saw, and I was naturally led to make some inquiry concerning them. My companion informed me that, by a judicious system of transplanting, constantly pursued, the proprietor was able to bring them to the highest perfection. I thought at once of the manner in which God, by continuous transplanting, keeps His people fresh and beautiful, and prevents them from becoming too closely attached to the world. To be weaned from earth is one of the means of making us seek our spiritual food from heaven; and the trials of earth, transplanting us from place to place and from plan to plan, tend to prepare us for the great transplanting which is to take us from this world altogether, and root us in the garden of the Lord above.

II. THE PARTICULAR QUALITIES OF CHARACTER WHICH PROVIDENTIAL UNSETTLEMENTS ARE MOST CALCULATED TO FOSTER.

1. Purity of motive and conduct; and where shall we find a better illustration of that than in the history of Jacob? He began life as a supplanter. He out-bargained Esau. He imposed on Isaac. He out-generaled Laban. We cannot admire him, and we are not drawn to him then. But when he lay on his death-bed, no characteristics strike us more than his honesty in dealing with his sons, and his sincerity in dealing with God. And how was that transformation wrought? "By the Spirit of God," you answer, and you answer well; but I would supplement your statement by putting it thus, "By the Spirit of God, through and in connection with the frequent unsettlements to which he was subjected."

2. They tend to foster strength, either for endurance or for action. Take for example, here, the case of Abraham. He was tried in Canaan and in Egypt; he was tested by the long delay in the fulfilment of the promise in regard to Isaac, and by the domestic discord that arose concerning Ishmael; and his wrestlings with these afflictions developed in him, by the grace of God, that spiritual might in which he conquered on the mount of the Lord, when he earned for himself the title of "the father of the faithful."

3. The recurrence of these "emptying" processes deepens the sympathy and widens the charity of the Christian. Indeed hazard the assertion that no man can be called complete in character who has not been subjected to them. It is in this very relation that our Lord Himself is said to have been "made perfect through suffering," and each of us has doubtless had an experience of his own which enables him to understand what seems at first so strange. Experience is thus the mother of sympathy and charity. The older a Christian grows he learns to feel for others more, and to condemn them less, and he is a true "son of consolation" only in the proportion in which be is able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith he himself is comforted of God. What I have been saying, then, all tends toward these two propositions, namely, that unbroken prosperity would be a curse to a man, and not a blessing; and that providential unsettlements, when rightly interpreted and improved, are really favours, though they do come draped in sadness.

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

(A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)

1. How God manages, on a large scale, in the common matters of life, to keep us in a process of change, and prevent our lapsing into a state of security such as we desire. The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand decanting process, where change follows change, and all are emptied from vessel to vessel. Here and there a man, like Moab, stands upon his lees, and commonly with the same effect. Fire, flood, famine, sickness in all forms and guises, wait upon us, seen or unseen, and we run the gauntlet through them, calling it life. And the design appears to be to turn us hither and thither, allowing us no chance to stagnate m any sort of benefit or security. Even the most successful, who seem, in one view, to go straight on to their mark, get on after all, rather by a dexterous and continual shifting, so as to keep their balance and exactly meet the changing conditions that befall them. Nor is there anything to sentimentalise over in this ever-shifting, overturning process, which must be encountered in all the works of life; no place for sighing — vanity of vanities. There is no vanity in it, more than in the mill that winnows and separates the grain.

2. That the radical evil of human character, as being under sin, consists in a determination to have our own way, which determination must be somehow reduced and extirpated. Hence the necessity that our experience be so appointed as to shako us loose continually from our purpose, or from all security and rest in it. The coarse and bitter flavour of our self-will is reduced in this manner, and gradually fined away. If we could stand on our lees, in continual peace and serenity, if success were made secure, subject to no change or surprise, what, on the other hand, should we do more certainly than stay by our evil mind, and take it as a matter of course that our will is to be done; the very thing above all others of which we most need to be cured. It would not even do for us to be uniformly successful in our best meant and holiest works, our prayers, our acts of sacrifice, our sacred enjoyments; for we should very soon fall back into the subtle power of our self-will, and begin to imagine, in our vanity, that we are doing some. thing ourselves.

3. That our evils are generally hidden from us till they are discovered to us by some kind of trial or adversity. What good man ever fell into a time of deep chastening who did not find some cunning infatuation by which he was holden broken up, and some new discovery made of himself? The veils of pride are rent, the rock of self-opinion is shattered, and he is reduced to a point of gentleness and tenderness that allows him to suffer a true conviction concerning what was hidden from his sight. Nor is anything so effectual in this way as to meet some great overthrow that interrupts the whole course of life; all the better if it dislodges him even in his Christian works and appointments. What was I doing, he now asks, that I must needs be thrown out of my holiest engagements? for what fault was I brought under this discipline?

4. That we are prepared in this manner for the gracious and refining work of the Spirit in us. Under some great calamity or sorrow, the loss of a child, the visitations of bodily pain, a failure in business, the slanders of an enemy, a persecution for the truth or for righteousness' sake, how tender and open to God does the soul become!

5. Too great quiet and security, long continued, are likely to allow the reaction or the recovered power of our old sins, and must not therefore be suffered. Suppose a man is converted as a politician — there is nothing wrong certainly in being a politician — but how subtle is the power of those old habits and affinities in which he lived, and how likely are they, if he goes straight on by a course of prosperous ambition, to be finally corrupted by their subtle reaction. When he is defeated, therefore, a little further on, by untoward combinations, and thrown out of all hope in this direction, let him not think it hard that he is less successful now in the way of Christ, than he was before in the way of his natural ambition. God understands him, and is leading him off, not unlikely, to some other engagement, that He may get him clear of the sediment on which he stands. In the same way, doubtless, it is that another is driven out of his business by a failure, another out of his family expectations by death and bereavement, another out of his very industry and his living by a loss of health, another out of prayers and expectations that were rooted in presumption, another out of works of beneficence that associated pride and vanity, another out of the ministry of Christ, where, by self-indulgence, or in some other way, his natural infirmities were rather increased than corrected. There is no engagement, however sacred, from which God will not sometimes separate us, that He may clear us of our sediment and the reactions of our hidden evils.Application —

1. It brings a lesson of admonition to the class of worldly men who are continually prospering in the things of this life. "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God." I commend it to your deepest and most thoughtful attention.

2. Others, again, have been visited by many and great adversities, emptied about from vessel to vessel all their lives long, still wondering what it means, while still they adhere to their sins. There is, alas! no harder kind of life than this, a life of continual discipline that really teaches nothing. Is it so with you, or is it not? There is no class of beings more to be pitied than defeated men, who have gotten nothing out of their defeat but that dry sorrow of the world which makes it only more barren, and therefore more insupportable.

3. It is necessary, in the review of this subject, to remind any genuine Christian what benefits he ought to receive in the trials and changes through which he is called to pass. Receive them meekly, rather, and bow down to them gladly. Bid them welcome when they come, and, if they come not, ask for them; lift up your cry unto God, and beseech Him that by any means He will correct you, and purify you, and separate you to Himself.

(H. Bushnell, D. D.)

(C. E. Tisdall, D. D.)

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

     5445   potters and pottery

How those are to be Admonished who Decline the Office of Preaching Out of Too Great Humility, and those who Seize on it with Precipitate Haste.
(Admonition 26.) Differently to be admonished are those who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid by reason of excessive humility, and those whom imperfection or age forbids to preach, and yet precipitancy impells. For those who, though able to preach with profit, still shrink back through excessive humility are to be admonished to gather from consideration of a lesser matter how faulty they are in a greater one. For, if they were to hide from their indigent neighbours money which they possessed …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Balaam's Prophecy. (Numb. xxiv. 17-19. )
Carried by the Spirit into the far distant future, Balaam sees here how a star goeth out of Jacob and a sceptre riseth out of Israel, and how this sceptre smiteth Moab, by whose enmity the Seer had been brought from a distant region for the destruction of Israel. And not Moab only shall be smitten, but its southern neighbour, Edom, too shall be subdued, whose hatred against Israel had already been prefigured in its ancestor, and had now begun to display Itself; and In general, all the enemies of …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Meditations for the Sick.
Whilst thy sickness remains, use often, for thy comfort, these few meditations, taken from the ends wherefore God sendeth afflictions to his children. Those are ten. 1. That by afflictions God may not only correct our sins past, but also work in us a deeper loathing of our natural corruptions, and so prevent us from falling into many other sins, which otherwise we would commit; like a good father, who suffers his tender babe to scorch his finger in a candle, that he may the rather learn to beware …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

The Section Chap. I. -iii.
The question which here above all engages our attention, and requires to be answered, is this: Whether that which is reported in these chapters did, or did not, actually and outwardly take place. The history of the inquiries connected with this question is found most fully in Marckius's "Diatribe de uxore fornicationum," Leyden, 1696, reprinted in the Commentary on the Minor Prophets by the same author. The various views may be divided into three classes. 1. It is maintained by very many interpreters, …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

The Prophet Joel.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS. The position which has been assigned to Joel in the collection of the Minor Prophets, furnishes an external argument for the determination of the time at which Joel wrote. There cannot be any doubt that the Collectors were guided by a consideration of the chronology. The circumstance, that they placed the prophecies of Joel just between the two prophets who, according to the inscriptions and contents of their prophecies, belonged to the time of Jeroboam and Uzziah, is …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Jeremiah
The interest of the book of Jeremiah is unique. On the one hand, it is our most reliable and elaborate source for the long period of history which it covers; on the other, it presents us with prophecy in its most intensely human phase, manifesting itself through a strangely attractive personality that was subject to like doubts and passions with ourselves. At his call, in 626 B.C., he was young and inexperienced, i. 6, so that he cannot have been born earlier than 650. The political and religious …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament