he is to do this because humility is well-pleasing to God, because it is the hand of God, the mighty hand of God, that he is under, and because doing so is the appointed way to be exalted in due time; and in the second view of affliction, the Christian is to cast all his cares on God, and he is to do this because God cares for him. This is the outline I mean to fill up in the remaining part of the discourse; and, in doing this, I shall not first consider the two views of affliction, then the two views of the duty of the Christian. under affliction, and then the two views of motive urging to the performance of these duties, but I shall successively, as the Apostle does, take up each connected view of affliction, duty, and motive.

Before entering on this, however, it may be proper to say a word or two on the manner in which these two verses are connected with the immediately preceding context. In the close of his directory respecting ecclesiastical duties, the Apostle recommends the cultivation of humility as necessary to that mutual subjection by which all in Christian fellowship, whether office-bearers or private members, whether elders or juniors, should be distinguished; calling them to put it on as their appropriate dress when in love they served each other; and he strengthens his recommendation by quoting an Old Testament oracle, in which God's complacent approbation of the humble, and his indignant reprobation of the proud, are strongly expressed. "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." And in passing to offering them some advices suited to those circumstances of persecution and trial to which, by the appointment of God, and through the direct and indirect agency of the great adversary the devil, they were already exposed, and were likely soon to be still more exposed, he naturally, in so high recommendation of humility as a disposition peculiarly pleasing to God, finds a ground for enjoining on them the cultivation and display of this virtue, in reference to their afflictions, viewed as the work of God's hand: "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Hum

ble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God." The quotation from the Old Testament is brought forward as a motive to enforce equally the injunction that precedes it, and the injunction that follows it.

I. FIRST VIEW OF AFFLICTION, AND ITS DUTY.

§ 1. Affliction is subjection to the mighty hand of God. The first view here given us of a state of affliction is, that it is a state of subjection to the mighty hand of God. The words of the Apostle are equivalent to, Being in affliction, ye are under the mighty hand of God; humble yourselves under it. "The hand of God," like "the arm of the Lord," is a figurative expression for the power of God in action, as men put forth their power by their arm and hand. He is said to have brought his people from Egypt "by strength of hand;" that is, by the exertion of power. It is said, "None can stay his hand," none can prevent or control the exertion of his power. When Job expresses a wish that, by an act of Divine power, he might be destroyed, he says, "Oh that it would please God to let loose his hand, and cut me off;" and, speaking of the power of God as the efficient cause of all things, he says, "The hand of the Lord hath done this, in whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." The epithet "mighty" is added to suggest the idea of great, resistless energy.

To have the hand of God on a person, to be in his hand, or under his hand, does not necessarily indicate being in a state of affliction. It merely means that the power of God is exercised with regard to that person. Jehovah is said by Moses to "love his people;" and in a parallel clause he adds, "All his saints are in thy hand," protected by thy power. "The hand of our God," says Ezra, "is upon all them for good that seek him; but his power and his wrath

1 Joh. vi. 9; xii. 10.

is against all them that forsake him. The hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy." The powerful inspiring influence of the Holy Spirit is described as the hand of the Lord being on the prophets, in the cases of Elijah and Ezekiel. But the phrase is very often used in a more specific sense, as descriptive of the power of God put forth for punishment or chastisement. It is said, "the hand of the Lord was heavy on the men of Ashdod," when he visited them with a severe judgment. "The hand of the Lord is on thy cattle," said Moses to Pharaoh, when he announced the plague of murrain. "Have pity on me," says Job, “Have pity on me, O my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me." "Day and night," says the Psalmist, "thy hand was heavy on me. Thine arrows stick to me; thy hand presseth me sore."1 "Let me not fall into the hand of man, but into the hand of the Lord," said David, when called to choose whether war, or famine, or pestilence, was to be the punishment of his sin. Some interpreters consider the phrase before us, "under the mighty hand of God," as merely referring generally to the being entirely at the disposal of God, completely in his hand; but the use of the epithet mighty, and the contrast of the depressed state of the person under the mighty hand of God, with the state of elevation promised him if the temper of his mind properly correspond with his circumstances, as well as the succeeding context, all convince me that the Apostle had in his eye "the manifold trials,” “the afflictions," to which, as a part of the Christian brotherhood in the world, those to whom he wrote were exposed. The thought which he wished to bring strongly before their mind is this: These afflictions to which you are exposed are the result of the Divine appointment and agency. Let us shortly illustrate that thought; it is an important one.

"Affliction cometh not forth of the dust; trouble doth

1 Deut. xxxiii. 3. v. 11.

Exod. ix. 3.

Ezra viii. 22, 31. 1 Kings xviii. 46. Ezek. i. 3. 1 Sam.

Job xix. 21. Psal. xxxiil. 4. 1 Chron. xxi. 13.

not spring from the ground." They "come down from above;" they "come forth from Him who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." There are many who think and feel in reference to afflictive dispensations, as the Philistines of old, when they said, "a chance hath happened us." But there is neither blind chance, nor unintelligent necessity, in God's world. "He worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will." No event occurs apart from his plan, and the execution of his plan. "His counsel stands, and he doth all his pleasure."

The doctrine of providence, a particular providence (for it is not very easy to understand what is meant by a general providence as opposed to a particular one), is supported by numerous and powerful arguments, deduced from rational principles, as well as from the declaration of inspired Scripture. Admit the wisdom, the power, and the omnipresence of the Divine Being, and you cannot consistently deny his providence. "Are not two sparrows," says our Lord, "sold for a farthing? yet one of them shall not fall to the ground without your heavenly Father: even the hairs of your head are all numbered."3 Can He who cares for sparrows, and numbers the hairs of our head, can he be inattentive to, or unconcerned in, what so closely concerns the honour of his character, and the highest interests of his people, as their afflictions?

The agency of God in the afflictions of his people is not only deducible from, or more properly involved in, the doctrine of his universal providence; but it is taught in the most explicit terms which language can furnish: "Shall there be evil," that is, suffering, affliction in any form, "in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" "I am the Lord, and there is none else; there is no God besides me. I form the light, and create the darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." "The Lord

1 Job. v. 6. James i. 17. Isa. xxviii. 29.

* 1 Sam. vi. 9. Eph. i. 11.

Isa. xlvi. 10.

3 Luke xii. 7.

killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich he bringeth low, and he lifteth up." "See now that I, even I, am he; there is no God with me. I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any who can deliver out of my hand." "He maketh sore, and bindeth up; he woundeth, and his hands make whole." The person accidentally killed, as we phrase it, is by Moses said to be "delivered by God into the hands" of the person who unintentionally deprives him of life.1

2

And as we are to consider those afflictions as proceeding from the hand of God, not merely when there appears to us no intermediate agent, whether physical or intelligent, as in the case of sudden death, or unaccountable accident; but whatever be the immediate occasion, whether they occur from the operation of what we call natural causes, in the course of the established order of things, or from the agency of intelligent beings, human, angelic, or infernal, they are to be considered as coming forth from him "of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things." The miraculous slaughter of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, for whose punishment the Lord "made a new thing," and the death of those who through disease or old age were cut off in the wilderness, were equally the works of the Lord. Wars which spring from human passions, and are carried on through human instrumentality, equally with the famine and the pestilence, are numbered among the works of God; and their ravages are "desolations which he makes in the earth." When adversity mingles its bitter ingredients in our cup, whatever these ingredients are, let us never forget that it is God who puts that cup into our hand. It matters not whether our affliction springs from those disastrous visitations in which the agency of man has no part, and over which it has no control, like that mysterious blight which

1 Amos iii. 6. Isa. xlv. 7. 1 Sam. ii. 6. Deut. xxxii. 39. Job v. 18. Exod. xxi. 13.

2 Rom. xi. 36.

3 Psal. xlvi. 8.