dear friends, I have nothing farther to wish for myself or you, than that we may heartily believe these things, for then it will be impossible, that we should not with open arms embrace true religion, and clasp it to our hearts; since nature teaches every one to desire happiness, and to fly from misery. So that Epicurus himself would teach us to lay hold on joy and pleasure, as the τό πρῶτον οικείον, or first and proper good. This therefore let us lay down as a certain principle, and ever adhere to it, that we may not like brute beasts, remain in subjection to the flesh, that safety and joy and all happiness is the property of him who is possessed of virtue, and that all virtue is comprehended in true piety; and let us remember what the Prophet adds, (according to the Greek translatorst,) as the necessary consequence of this principle, that to the wicked there can be no joy. * The word Juvenes, or my dear youths, occurs here and in several other places, as these lectures were delivered to a society of young theological students, but it did not seem necessary to make the translation so exactly literal. † Ουκ ἐςὶ χαίρειν τοῖς ἀσέβεσι. MEDITATIONS ON PSALM CXXX. Ver. 1. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Ir is undoubtedly both an useful and pleasant employment, to observe the emotions of great and heroic minds, in great and arduous affairs, but that mind only is truly great, and superior to the whole world, which does in the most placid manner subject itself to God, securely casting all its burdens and cares upon him; in all the uncertain alterations of human affairs, looking at his hand, and fixing its regard upon that alone. Such the royal prophet David declares himself every where to have been, and no where more evidently than in this psalm, which seems to have been composed by him. He lifts up his head amidst surrounding waves, and directing his face and his voice to heaven, he says, Out of the depths O Lord do I cry unto thee. For so I would render it, as he does not seem to express a past fact, but as the Hebrew Idiom imports, a prayer which he was now actually presenting. Out of the depths.] Being as it were immersed and overwhelmed in an abyss of misery and calamities. It is indeed the native lot of man, to be born to trouble, as the spark, (the children of the coal, as the original expression signifies) to fly upward. Life and grief are congenial*; but men who are born again, seem as in a redoubled proportion, to be twice born to trouble; with so many and so great evils are they as it were loaden, beyond all other men, and that to such a degree, that they may seem as it were, sometimes to be oppressed with them. And if any think this is strange, surely as the apostle expresses it, he cannot see afar off, pworále, at best, he only looks at the surfaces of things, and cannot penetrate far into those depths. For even the philosophers themselves, untaught by divine revelation, investigated admirable reasons for such dispensations of providence, and undertook in this respect boldly to plead the cause of God. "God (says the Roman sage) loves his own people truly, but he loves them severely; as the manner in which fathers express their love to their children, is generally very different from that of mothers, they order them to be called up early to their studies, and suffer them not to be idle in those days, when their usual business is interrupted; but sometimes put them on labouring till the sweat flows down, and sometimes by their discipline excite their tears; while the mother fondles them in her bosom, keeps them in the shade, and knows not how to consent that they should weep or grieve or la * Ως ἄρα συγγενὴς ἐςί λύπη και βιός bour. God bears the heart of a Father to good men, and there is strength rather than tenderness in his love, they are therefore exercised with labours, sorrows, and losses, that they may grow robust: Whereas, were they to be fattened by luxurious fare, and indulged in indolence, they would not only sink under fatigues, but be burdened with their own unwieldy bulk*." Presently after he quotes a remarkable saying of Demetrius the Cynict, to this purpose, "He seems to be the unhap piest of mankind, who has never been exercised with adversity, as he cannot have had an opportunity of trying the strength of his own mind." To wish to pass life without it, is to be ignorant of one part of nature, so that I may pronounce thee to be miserable, if thou hast never been miserable. If thou hast passed through life without ever struggling with an enemy, no one, not even thou thyself canst know whether thou art able to make any resistance; whereas in afflictions we experience, * Vere suos amat et severe Deus. Multo aliter patres, aliter matres indulgent, illi liberos ad studia obeunda mature excitari jubent, feriatis quoque diebus non patiuntur otiosos, et sæpe sudodorem illis, et interdum lachrymas excutiunt: at matres fovere in sinu, in umbra continere volunt; nunquam flere, nunquam tristari, nunquam laborare. Patrium habet Deus adversus bonos viros animum, et illos fortius amat: et operibus, doloribus, ac damnis exagitantur, ut verum colligant robur. Languent per inertiam saginata: nec labore tantum, sed et mole, et ipso sui onere deficiunt. SEN. + Nihil mihi videtur infelicius eo, oui nihil unquam evenerit adversi; non licuit illi se experiri. not so much what our own strength is, as what is the strength of God in us; and what the aid of divine grace is, which often bears us up under them to a surprising degree, and makes us joyful by a happy exit; so that we shall be able to say, My God, my strength and my deliverer. Thus the church becomes conspicuous in the midst of the flames, like the burning bush, through the good will of him that dwelt in it, and when it seems to be overwhelmed with waters, God brings it out of them, cleansed and beautified, mergas profundo, pulchrior exilit; he plunges it in the deep, and it rises fairer than before. We will not here maintain that paradox of the Stoics, That evils which happen to good men, are not to be called evils at all; which however is capable of a very good sense, since religion teaches us, that the greatest evils are changed, and work together for good; which comes almost to the same thing, and perhaps was the true meaning of the Stoics. Banishment and poverty are indeed evils in one sense, i. e. they have something hard and grievous in them; but when they fall on a good and brave man, they seem to lay aside the malignity of their nature, and become tame and gentle. The very sharpness of them excites and exercises virtue, by exciting they increase it, so that the root of faith shoots the stronger, and fixes the deeper, and thereby adds new strength to fortitude and patience; and as we see in this example before us, affliction does by a happy kind of necessity, drive |