Yet a season and you know,
Happy entrance shall be given—
All your sorrows left below,
And earth exchang’d for heaven.
What a prospect! what a scene! what a joy! nor shall you be disappointed of your hope, seeing Christ is commissioned to keep what you have long committed to his dear divine hands, your body and soul, the one for almost immediate glory, the other for a joyful resurrection.
Thus having viewed the passage in this literal form, let me return to point out some of the days of evil of which the Bible speaks, and you may meet with, that when they come you may remember I told you of them. When God is pleased to shew us our sinful hearts in that degree we are able to bear it. When conscience reproaches us for sins of omission and commission; sins long practised and long pursued by us. Satan taking the advantage of these convictions, and throwing in his fiery darts. These are called the days of evil. Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about. This is a time you will surely meet with, as Job and others have, who have said before you, Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth. Thou hast set my secret sins before me. Remember not the sins of my youth. Such days as these, when guilt lies heavy on the conscience, you will feel no pleasure, till faith embraces the atonement, and banishes fear. Another evil day you will have is the day of temptation, when Satan is apparently let loose upon you, as he was upon poor Job, and Paul, and Jeremiah. When you will want your head covered in the day of battle, and feel your need of the shield of faith and the helmet of hope, the one to cover your head, the other to repel these fiery darts of the Devil, which he will shoot at you—fiery shot, from the burning malice of Hell, such as strong temptation to excite burning lusts, blasphemous thoughts of God, horrid suggestions, debasing thoughts of Christ, with all the Atheism, Deism, Arianism, Socinianism, Arminianism, and Antinomianism of the human heart, stirred up by the Devil, to foster despair, enmity, and hatred of God. Thus tried you must watch the motions of the Spirit, leading you to the death of the Saviour, and with your Spirit exclaiming, Thou, O Lord, art my hope in the day of evil.
I must notice another day: Public troubles on the Church, which I believe will come yet; I humbly conceive the man of sin will die hard; he seems to be hearing some of his dying groans at present, but it will have its last convulsive struggle; the hour of temptation must come on—the Church seems in her Laodicean state, and it may be really in that state for all I know, though many great men suppose the Church in her Sardian state; be that as it may, have we not cause to lament the general drowsiness of the Church, the very few names that have not defiled their garments—the cloudy state of Professor and Possessor—the state the Prophet alluded to, when he said, It shall come to pass that the light shall not be clear nor dark. Is it not true of that light which is in the Church? the people not wholly in the dark about the Doctrines of the Gospel, yet they are not clear; and perhaps, never was a time in the Church when God’s real people were so cloudy, generally, about their interest in the Saviour, so that we may look for the sieve—a sifting time will come, for the Church and the World seem too much allied, at present, in principle and practice. The Saviour says, Be ye seperate—and if this small, still voice is not obeyed, you may depend upon it he will bring his rod, for his fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor. Hence his own declaration, And I will bring upon thee a day of evil. This you may feel personally. Also, after having been a little at ease, and careless of God’s glory, his cause, and his ways, he may permit you to fall; or by associating with carnal Professors, or the World too much, God may bring on you a rod to drive you from them—and if you should chance to fall, and they know it, though God in mercy, gives you repentance to life, they will be the first to stone you, and like the Priest and Levite, take care to avoid you; and if after this, you maintain the sentiment of human weakness, and insist upon it man is nothing, but as he is made and kept by the grace of God, these stout men, these whole-hearted professors, will hate you and your Doctrines; so Job found, when he said, He that is ready to slip with his feet, is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease. But God may bring on you such an evil day.
Another day of evil is, Suffering persecution from the world for the truth’s sake; or from those who profess a part of the truth. Such may hate you, nay the Saviour says they shall hate you, and say all manner of evil against you—all manner, not a few hard and ill-natured things, but any thing disrespectful, spiteful, and disgraceful. This may be the lot of my Brother—this you will find very hard, seeing you have been kind to all, and acted as upright before men as you could, never deserving this from man,—yet meeting with it. Defamation of character, endeavouring to injure you in your situation, trying to prejudice all your friends against you, and to stir up your own household to oppose you. But these things will they do to you, because, says the Saviour, They have not known the Father nor me. However, you will not be wholly destitute of some who will be raised up for your good. Hence the promise to the persecuted saint, And I will cause you to be well entreated in the day of evil. This was God’s promise to poor Jeremiah; and the Saviour gives the command, Let my out-casts dwell with thee, Moab, be thou a covert to him, from the face of the spoiler.
Thus the Lord will take care of you in time of persecution, national troubles, which the children of God must feel in their degree, through the loss of trade, bankruptcies, a long war, the high price of provisions, and the scarcity of every national blessing; yet, depend upon it, the Lord will find bread for you. So David encourages the people of God, I have been young and now am old, yet I never saw the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging of bread. Or, as the learned say, it should be rendered, though begging of bread, yet not forsaken. Bread and water the Lord has promised you, and remembering that you are one of his prisoners, that he is bound to maintain you, Friends will be raised up, a supply will be sent in from the most unlikely quarters. And the earth helped the woman.—I have commanded the Ravens to feed thee there. Thus you shall not want in the day of evil. You may meet with many family troubles as Jacob did, and say with that dear Patriarch, at the close of your life, Few and evil have the days of my life been. Many evils have I met with from my children and relations, enough to break a heart of stone. My relations were envious, oppressive, cruel, and ungrateful. My children’s conduct often pierced my heart.—I have been in many wants and dangers, but the Lord that redeemed me from all evil, has thus far led me on, and I am now going home, for I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.
Thus my dear Brother, you may have some days of evil, from family troubles, losses, crosses, and cares. You may have no small opposition from men of corrupt minds, that lay in wait to deceive. Hence the Apostle recommends a clear experimental knowledge of the truth—Christ the essential truth, and the word of God as the revealed truth. A few head notions though very clear, are not able to withstand the artifices of hell, for if a man is argued into a set of notions, he is liable to be argued out of them. When a man of ability, reason, sense, and a vast string of arguments, against the previous truths of the gospel, attacks such as have no grace in the heart, they are soon moved from the truth; but when those are attacked that have felt the precious truths of the gospel in the heart, though the poor believer is not able to answer him one question out of an hundred, he can prove the reality of those truths he holds, because they have done so much for him. The truth has brought him from darkness to light, from sin to holiness, from the service of the devil to the Service of God. Thus He can prove the reality of Bible truth, by his own present experience; and thus he is able to stand in the evil day, the day of rebuke and blasphemy. I can prove the Divinity of God my Saviour; by the answers he has given me to prayer, by the words he has sent to my heart, with power, and by the virtue of his sacrifice, which has lifted up my mind, so as no human power or object could have done, I can likewise prove the Doctrine of the Trinity, by the operation of the Father’s love, the manifestation of the Atonement of the Son, and by the regenerating influences of the Spirit. So we can experimentally prove the truth of every doctrine and divine ordinance. But then, when all my former experience is hid from me; what am I to do, when attacked by my foes in this evil day, and I am as a dumb man, in whose mouth are no reproofs? How shall I act? methinks you are ready to say. To which I must reply, that there is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; but if shut up in heart and lip, then stand still, and hence the watch word, Stand! stand! shall they cry, but none shall look back—still abide by the stuff, if you are not able to go out to battle, you shall share alike with those that do. Having done all to stand, stand in the evil day. Still go on hearing, praying, reading, hoping, and waiting, and whatever errors are thrown into your mind, and have brought it into bondage, you may depend upon it the Lord will deliver you from them; and here you will see sovereign grace, yourself delivered, and the wise and prudent given up to believe a lie. This made the redeemer glad; he rejoiced in spirit and said, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast HID these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes—even so Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight.—Thus may you stand in the days of evil.
But finally; sickness, age, death, and judgment, are days of evil; not that there can be any curse in these things, to one of God’s elect, but they will be found such to those who know not God.—These are days in which none but the favourites of Christ can lift up their heads: the prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. But in times of sickness and age, the brightest saint may suffer much in body, and be afflicted in mind: God may hide his face, Satan may plague, conscience may be uneasy; pain may be great, the spirits may droop; but there is no curse in all these things: one smile from the Saviour will clear all up, and make the soul happy in a sickly body. Hence the promise, blessed is he that considereth the poor and needy; even a precious Jesus in his personal or mystical suffering, the Lord will make his bed in his sickness. This my dear brother is acting the part of a kind nurse, he will strengthen you upon the bed of languishing: thus shall my subject be felt in times of sickness and age, even the peculiar blessedness of considering, of remembering our Creator in the days of youth. Death and judgment will be evil times to many of our fallen race, but they must be the crowning days of all who love his appearing. But I must not enlarge, I think I shall tire your patience in this long letter; the sheep are gathering together, I must ran with some food for them—’tis past seven o’Clock; God bless thee.
Ever your’s in him who is our hiding place, and our shield,
