SERMON XII.
ON AFFLICTIONS.
"And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." — Matthew xi. 6.
It is a blessing, and a rare blessing, then, not to be offended in Jesus Christ. But what was there, or what could there be in him, who is the wisdom itself, and the glory of the Father, the substantial image of all perfection, which could give subject of scandal to men? His cross, my dearest brethren, which was formerly the shame of the Jews, and is, and shall be, to the end of ages, the shame of the greatest part of Christians. But, when I say that the cross of the Saviour is the shame of the most of Christians, I mean not only the cross that he bore, I mean more especially that which we are obliged, from his example, to bear; without which, he rejects us as his disciples, and denies us any participation of that glory into which he has entered, through the cross alone.
Behold what displeases us, and what we find to complain of in our divine Saviour. We would wish, that, since he was to suffer, his sufferings had been a title, as it were, of exemption, which had merited to us the privilege of not suffering with him. Let us dispel this error, my dearest brethren: the only thing which depends on us, is that of rendering our sufferings meritorious; but to suffer, or not to suffer, is not left to our choice. Providence has so wisely dispensed the good and evil of this life, that each in his station, however happy his lot may appear, finds crosses and afflictions, which always counterbalance the pleasures of it. There is no perfect happiness on the earth; for it is not here the time of consolations, but the time of sufferance. Grandeur hath its subjections and its disquiets; obscurity, its humiliations and its scorns; the world, its cares and its caprices; retirement, its sadness and weariness; marriage, its antipathies and its frenzies; friendship, its losses or its perfidies; piety itself, its repugnances and its disgusts. In a word, by a destiny inevitable to the children of Adam, each one finds his own path strewed with brambles and thorns. The apparently happiest condition hath its secret sorrows, which empoison all its felicity. The throne is the seat of chagrins equally as the lowest place; superb palaces conceal the most cruel discontents, equally as the hut of the poor and of the humble labourer; and, lest our place of exile should become endeared to us, we always feel, in a thousand different ways, that something is yet wanting to our happiness.
Nevertheless, destined to suffer, we cannot love the sufferances; continually stricken with some affliction, we are unable to make a merit of our pains; never happy, our crosses, become necessary, cannot at least become useful to us. We are ingenious in depriving ourselves of the merit of all our sufferances. One while we seek, in the weakness of our own heart, the excuse of our peevishness and of our murmurings; another, in the excess or in the nature of our afflictions; and again, in the obstacles which they seem to us to cast in the way of our salvation; that is to say, one while we complain of being too weak to bear our sufferings with patience; another, that they are too excessive; and lastly, that it is impossible in that situation to pay attention to salvation.
Such are the three pretexts continually opposed in the world to the Christian use of affliction: the pretext of self-weakness; the pretext of the excess or the nature of our afflictions; the pretext of the obstacles which they seem to place in the way of our salvation. These are the pretexts we have now to overthrow, by opposing to them the rules of faith. Attend, then, be whom ye may, and learn that the cause of condemnation to most men is not pleasures alone; — alas! they are so rare on the earth, and so narrowly followed by disgust; — it is likewise the unchristian use they make of afflictions.
Part. I. — The language most common to the souls afflicted by the Lord, is that of alleging their own weakness in order to justify the unchristian use they make of their afflictions. They complain that they are not endowed with a force of mind sufficient to preserve under them a submissive and a patient heart; that nothing is more conducive to happiness than the want of feeling; that this character, saves us endless vexations and chagrins inevitable in life; but that we cannot fashion to ourselves a heart according to our own wishes; that religion doth not render unfeeling and stoical those who are born with the tender feelings of humanity, and that the Lord is too just to make a crime to us even of our misfortunes.
But, to overthrow an illusion so common and so unworthy of piety, remark, in the first place, that when Jesus Christ hath commanded to all believers to bear with submission and with love the crosses proposed for us by his goodness, he hath not added that an order so just, so consoling, so conformable to his examples, should concern only the unfeeling and impatient souls. He hath not distinguished among his disciples those whom nature, pride, or reflection had rendered firmer and more constant, from those whom tenderness and humanity had endowed with more feeling, in order to make a duty to the first of a patience and an insensibility which cost them almost nothing, and to excuse the others to whom they become more difficult.
On the contrary, his divine precepts are cures; and the more we are inimical to them, through the character of our heart, the more are they proper for, and become necessary to us. It is because you are weak, and that the least contradictions always excite you so much against sufferances, that the Lord must purify you by tribulations and sorrows: for it is not the strong who have occasion to be tried, it is the weak.
In effect, what is it to be weak and repining? It is an excessive self-love; it is to give all to nature, and nothing to faith; it is to give way to every impulse of inclination, and to live solely for ease and self-enjoyment, as constituting the chief happiness of man.
Now, in this situation, and with this excessive fund of love for the world and for yourself, if the Lord were not to provide afflictions for your weakness; if he did not strike your body with an habitual languor which renders the world insipid to you; if he did not send losses and vexations, which force you, through decency, to regularity and retirement; if he did not overthrow certain projects, which, leaving your fortune more obscure, remove you from the great dangers; if he did not place you in certain situations where irksome and inevitable duties employ your best days; in a word, if he did not place between your weakness and you a barrier which checks and stops you, alas! your innocence would soon be wrecked; you would soon make an improper and fatal use of peace and prosperity? — you who find no security even amid afflictions and troubles. And seeing that, afflicted and separated from the world and from pleasures, you cannot return to God, what would it be did a more happy situation leave you no other check to your desires than yourself? The same weakness and the same load of self-love which render us so feeling to sorrow and affliction, would render us still more so to the dangerous impressions of pleasures and of human prosperities.
Thus, it is no excuse for our despondency and murmurs, to confess that we are weak and little calculated to support the strokes with which we are afflicted by God. The weakness of our heart proceeds only from the weakness of our faith; a Christian soul ought to be a valiant soul, superior, says the apostle, to persecution, disgrace, infirmities, and even death. He may be oppressed, continues the apostle, but he cannot be vanquished; he may be despoiled of his wealth, reputation, ease, and even life, but he cannot be robbed of that treasure of faith and of grace which he has locked up in his heart, and which amply consoles him for all these fleeting and frivolous losses. He may be brought to shed tears of sensibility and of sorrow, for religion does not extinguish the feelings of nature; but his heart immediately disavows its weakness, and turns its carnal tears into tears of penitence and of piety.
What do I say? A Christian soul even delights in tribulations; he considers them as proofs of the tender watchfulness of God over him, as the precious pledges of the promises to come, as the blessed features of resemblance to Jesus Christ, and which give him an assured right to share after this life in his immortal glory. To be weak and rebellious against the order of God under sufferance, is to have lost faith, and to be no longer Christian.
I confess that there are hearts more tender and more feeling to sorrow than others; but that sensibility is left to them only to increase the merit of their sufferings, and not to excuse their impatience and murmurings. It is not the feeling, it is the immoderate use, of sorrow which the gospel condemns. In proportion as we are born feeling for our afflictions, so ought we to be so to the consolations of faith. The same sensibility which renders our heart susceptible of chagrin, should open it to grace which soothes and supports it. A good heart has many more resources against afflictions, in consequence of grace finding easier access to it. Immoderate grief is rather the consequence of passion than of the goodness of the heart; and to be unable to submit to God, or to taste consolation in our troubles, is to be, not tender and feeling, but intractable and desperate.
Moreover, all the precepts of the gospel require strength, and if you have not enough to support with submission the crosses with which the Lord pleaseth to afflict you, you must equally want sufficient for the observance of the other duties prescribed to you by the doctrine of Jesus Christ. It requires strength of mind to forgive an injury; to speak well of those who traduce us; to conceal the faults of those who wish to dishonour even our virtues. It requires fortitude to be enabled to fly from a world which is agreeable to us; to tear ourselves from pleasures toward which we are impelled by all our inclinations; to resist examples authorized by the multitude, and of which custom has now almost established a law. Strength of mind is required to make a Christian use of prosperity; to be humble in exaltation, mortified in abundance, poor of heart, amidst perishable riches, detached from all when possessed of all, and filled with desires for heaven amidst all the pleasures and felicities of the earth. It is required to be able to conquer ourselves; to repress a rising desire; to stifle an agreeable feeling; to recall to order a heart which is incessantly straying from it. Lastly, among all the precepts of the gospel, there is not one which does not suppose a firm and noble soul; every where self-denial is required; every where the kingdom of God is a field to be brought into cultivation, a vineyard where toil and the heat of the day must be endured, a career in which continual and valiant combating is required; in a word, the disciples of Jesus Christ can never be weak without being overcome; and every thing, even to the smallest obligations of faith, requires exertion, and bears the mark of the cross, which is its ruling spirit; and if you fail but for an instant in fortitude, you are lost. To say then that we are weak, is to say that the entire gospel is not made for us, and that we are incapable of being not only submissive and patient, but likewise of being chaste, humble, disinterested, mortified, gentle, and charitable.
But however weak we may be, we ought to have this confidence in the goodness of God, that we are never tried, afflicted, or tempted beyond our strength; that the Lord always proportioned the afflictions to our weakness; that he dealeth out his chastisements like his favours, by weight and measure; that in striking he meaneth not to destroy, but to purify and to save us; that he himself aideth us to bear the crosses which he imposeth; that he chastiseth us as a father, and not as a judge; that the same hand which strikes, sustains us; that the same rod which makes the wound, bears the oil and the honey to soften its pain. He knoweth the nature of our hearts, and how far our weakness goes; and as his intention in afflicting us is to sanctify and not to destroy us, he knoweth what degree of weight to give to his hand in order to diminish nothing from our merit, if too light, and, on the other side, not to lose it altogether, if beyond our strength.
Ah! what other intention could he have in shedding sorrows through our life? Is he a cruel God, who delighteth only in the misery of his creatures? Is he a barbarous tyrant, who finds his greatness and security only in the blood and in the tears of the subjects who worship him? Is he an envious and morose master, who can taste of no happiness while sharing it with his slaves? Is it necessary that we should suffer, groan, and perish, in order to render him happy? It is on our own account alone, therefore, that he punisheth and chastiseth us: his tenderness suffers, as I may say, for our evils; but as his love is a just and enlightened love, he prefereth to leave us to suffer, because he foresees that, in terminating our pains, he would augment our wretchedness. He is, says a holy father, like a tender physician, who pities, it is true, the cries and the sufferings of his patient, but who, in spite of his cries, cuts, even to the quick, the corrupted part of his wound. He is never more gentle and more compassionate than when he appears most severe; and afflictions must indeed be useful and necessary to us, since a God so merciful and so good can prevail upon himself to afflict us.
It is written, that Joseph, exalted to the first office in Egypt, could hardly retain his tears, and felt his bowels yearn toward his brethren in the very time that he affected to speak most harshly to them, and that he feigned not to know them. It is in this manner that Jesus Christ chastiseth us. He affects, if it be permitted to speak in this manner, not to acknowledge in us his co-heirs and his brethren; he strikes, and treats us harshly, as strangers; but his love suffers for this constraint. He is unable long to maintain this character of severity, which is so foreign to him. His favours soon come to soften his blows: he soon shows himself such as he is; and his love never fails to betray these appearances of rigour and anger. Judge, then, if the blows which come from so kind and so friendly a hand can be otherwise than proportioned to your weakness.
Let us accuse then only the corruption and not the weakness of our heart, for our impatience and murmurs. Have not weak young women formerly defied all the barbarity of tyrants? Have not children, before they had learned to support even the ordinary toils of life, run with joy to brave all the rigours of the most frightful death? Have not old men, already sinking under the weight of their own body, felt, like the eagle, their youth renewed amidst the torments of a long martyrdom? You are weak; but it is that very weakness which is glorious to faith and to the religion of Jesus Christ: it is even on that account that the Lord hath chosen you to display in your instance how much more powerful grace is than nature. If you were born with more fortitude and strength, you would do less honour to the power of grace: to man would be at tributed a patience which should be a gift of God. Thus, the weaker you are, the fitter instrument you become for the designs and for the glory of God. When his hand hath been heavy, he hath chosen only the weak, that man might attribute nothing to himself, and to overthrow, by the example of their constancy, the vain fortitude of sages and of philosophers. His disciples were only weak lambs, when he dispersed them through the universe, and exposed them amidst the wolves. They rendered glory in their weakness to the power of grace, and to the truth of his doctrine. They are those earthen vessels which the Lord taketh delight in breaking, like those of Gideon, to make the light and the power of faith shine forth in them with greater magnificence; and if you entered into the designs of his wisdom and of his mercy, your weakness, which in your opinion justifies your murmurs, would constitute the sweetest consolation of your sufferings.
Lord, would you say to him, I ask not that proud reason which seeks in the glory of suffering with constancy the whole consolation of its pains: I ask not from thee that insensibility of heart, which either feels not, or contemns its misfortunes. Leave me>
0 Lord, that weak and timid reason, that tender and feeling heart, which seems so little fitted to sustain its tribulations and sufferings: only increase thy consolations and favours. The more
1 shall appear weak in the sight of men, the greater wilt thou appear in my weakness: the more shall the children of the age admire the power of faith, which alone can exalt the weakest and most timid souls to that point of constancy and firmness, to which all philosophy hath never been able to attain. First pretext, taken in the weakness of man, confuted, we have now to expose the illusion of the second, which is founded on the excess or the nature of the afflictions themselves.
Part II. — Nothing is more usual with persons afflicted by God, than to justify their complaints and their murmurs by the excess or the nature of their afflictions. We always wish our crosses to have no resemblance to those of others; and, lest the example of their fortitude and of their faith condemn us, we seek out differences in our grievances, in order to justify that of our dispositions and of our conduct. We persuade ourselves that we could bear with resignation crosses of any other description; but that those with which we are overwhelmed by the Lord, are of such a nature as to preclude consolation: that the more we examine the lot of others, the more we do find our own misfortunes singular, and our situation unexampled: and that it is impossible to preserve patience and serenity in a state where chance seems to have collected, solely for us, a thousand afflicting circumstances which never before had happened to others.
But, to take from self-love a defence so weak and so unworthy of faith, I would only have forthwith to answer you, that the more extraordinary our afflictions appear, the less ought we to believe them the effects of chance; the more evidently ought we to see in them the secret and inscrutable arrangements of a God singularly watchful over our destiny; the more should we presume that, under events so new, he doubtless concealeth new views, and singular designs of mercy upon our soul; the more should we say to ourselves, that he consequently meaneth us not to perish with the multitude, which is the party of the reprobate, seeing that he leadeth us by ways so uncommon and so little trodden. This singularity of misfortunes ought, in the eyes of our faith, to be a soothing distinction. He hath always conducted his chosen, in matters of affliction as well as in other things, by new and extraordinary ways. What melancholy and surprising adventures in the life of a Noah, a Lot, a Joseph, a Moses, and a Job! Trace, from age to age, the history of the just, and you will always find in their various vicissitudes, something, I know not what, of singular and incredible, which has staggered even the belief of subsequent ages. Thus, the less your afflictions resemble those of others, the more should you consider them as the afflictions of God's chosen: they are stamped with the mark of the just: they enter into that tradition of singular calamities which, from the beginning of ages, forms their history. Battles lost, when victory seemed certain; cities, looked upon as impregnable, fallen at the sole approach of the enemy; a kingdom once the most flourishing in Europe, stricken with every evil which the Lord in his wrath can pour upon the people; the court filled with mourning, and all the royal race almost extinct. Such, sire, is what the Lord in his mercy reserved for your piety; and such are the unprecedented misfortunes which he prepared for you, to purify the prosperities of a reign the most brilliant in our annals. The singularity of the unfortunate events with which God afflicteth you, is intended for the sole purpose of rendering you equally pious as a Christian, as you have been great as a King. It would seem, that every thing was to be singular in your reign, the prosperities as the misfortunes, in order that, after your glory before men, nothing should be wanting to your piety before God. It is a striking example, prepared by his goodness for our age.
And, behold, my dear hearer, a striking instance, both to instruct and confute you, when you complain of the excess of your misfortunes and of your sufferings. The more God afflicteth, the greater is his love and his watchfulness over you. More common misfor^^tunes might have appeared to you as the consequences merely of natural causes; and though all events are conducted by the secret springs of his providence, you might perhaps have had room to suppose that the Lord had no particular design upon you, in providing for you only certain afflictions which happen every day to the rest of men. But, in the grievous and singular situation in which he placeth you, you can no longer hide from yourself that his regards are fixed on you alone, and that you are the special object of his merciful designs.
Now, what more consoling in our sufferings! God seeth me; he numbereth my sighs; he weigheth mine afflictions; he beholdeth my tears to flow; he maketh them subservient to my eternal sanctification. Since his hand hath weighed so heavily, and in so singular a way upon me, and since no earthly resource seems to be left me, I consider myself as having at last become an object more worthy of his cares and of his regards. Ah! if I still enjoyed a serene and happy situation, his looks would no longer be upon me; he would neglect me, and I should be blended before him with so many others who are the prosperous of the earth. Beloved sufferings, which, in depriving me of all human aids, restore me to God, and render him mine only resource in all my sorrows! Precious afflictions, which in turning me aside from all creatures, are the cause that I now become the continual object of the remembrance and of the mercies of my Lord!
I might reply to you, in the second place, that common and momentary afflictions would have aroused our faith but for an instant. We would soon have found, in every thing around us, a thousand resources to obliterate the remembrance of that slight misfortune. Pleasures, human consolations, the new events which the world is continually offering to our sight, would soon have beguiled our sorrow, and restored our relish for the world, and for its vain amusements; and our heart, always in concert with all the objects which flatter it, would soon have been tired of its sighs and of its sorrows. But the Lord, in sending afflictions in which religion alone can become our resource, hath meant to preclude all return toward the world, and to place between our weakness and us a barrier which can never be shaken by either time or accidents: he hath anticipated our inconstancy, in rendering precautions necessary to us, which might not perhaps have always appeared equally useful. He read, in the character of our heart, that our fidelity in flying the dangers of, and separating ourselves from the world, would not extend beyond our sorrow; that the same moment which beheld us consoled would witness our change; that, in forgetting our chagrins, we would soon have forgotten our pious resolutions; and that short-lived afflictions would have made us only short-lived righteous. He hath therefore established the continuance of our piety upon that of our sufferings; he hath lodged fixed and constant afflictions as sureties for the constancy of our faith: and lest, in leaving our soul in our own power, we should again restore it to the world, he hath resolved to render it safe, by attaching it for ever to the foot of the cross. We are thoroughly sensible ourselves that a great blow was required to rouse us from our lethargy; that we had been little benefited by the slight afflictions with which the Lord hath hitherto been pleased to visit us; and that scarcely had he stricken us, when we had forgotten the hand that had inflicted so salutary a wound. Of what, then, O my God, should I complain? That excess which I find in my troubles, is an excess of thy mercies. I do not consider that the less thou sparest the patient, the more thou hastenest his cure, and that all the utility and all the security of our sufferings consist in the rigour of thy blows. My sweetest consolation in the afflicting state in which thy providence, O Lord, hath been pleased to place me, shall then be, in future, to reflect, that at least thou sparest me not; that thou measurest thy rigours and thy remedies upon my wants, and not upon my desires; and that thou hast more regard to the security of my salvation than to the injustice of my complaints.
I might still reply to you: Enter into judgment with the Lord, you who complain of the excess of your sufferings; place in a balance, on the one side your crimes, and on the other your afflictions; measure the rigour of his chastisements upon the enormity of your offences; compare that which you suffer with that which you ought to suffer; see if your afflictions go the same length as your senseless pleasures have done; if the keenness and the continuance of your sorrows correspond with those of your profane debaucheries; if the state of restraint in which you live equals the licentiousness and the depravity of your former manners; and should your afflictions be found to overbalance your iniquities, then boldly reproach the Lord for his injustice. You judge of your sufferings by your inclinations, but judge of them by your crimes. What! not a single moment of your worldly life but what has perhaps made you deserving of an eternal misery, and you murmur against the goodness of a God who commuteth these everlasting torments, so often merited, into a few rapid and momentary afflictions, and even against which the consolations of faith hold out so many resources!
What injustice! what ingratitude! Ah! have a care, unfaithful soul, lest the Lord listen to thee in his wrath; have a care lest he punish thy passions, by providing for thee, here below, whatever is favourable to them; lest thou be not found worthy in his sight of these temporal afflictions; lest he reserve thee for the time of his justice and his vengeance, and that he treat thee like those unfortunate victims who are ornamented with flowers, who are nursed and fattened with so much care, only because they are destined for the sacrifice, and that the knife which is to stab, and the pile which is to consume them, are in readiness upon the altar. He is terrible in his gifts as in his wrath; and seeing that guilt must be punished either with fleeting punishments here below, or with eternal pains after this life, nothing ought to appear more fearful in the eyes of faith, than to be a sinner and yet prosperous on the earth.
Great God! let it be here then for me the time of thy vengeance; and since my crimes cannot go unpunished, hasten, O Lord, to satisfy thy justice. The more I am spared here, the more shalt thou appear to me as a terrible God, who refuseth to let me go for some fleeting afflictions, and whose wrath can be appeased by nothing but mine eternal misery. Lend not thine ear to the cries of my grief, nor to the lamentations of a corrupted heart, which knows not its true interests. I disown, Lord, these too human sighs which the sadness of my state still continually forces from me; these carnal tears which affliction so often maketh me to shed in thy presence. Listen not to the intreaties which I have hitherto made to attain an end to my sufferings; complete rather thy vengeance upon me here below; reserve nothing for that dreadful eternity, where thy chastisement shall be without end and without measure. I ask thee only to sustain my weakness; and, in shedding sorrows through my life, shed likewise upon it thy grace, which consoles and recompenses with such usury an afflicted heart.
To all these truths, so consoling for an afflicted soul, I might still add, that our sufferings appear excessive only through the excess of the corruption of our heart; that the keenness of our afflictions springs solely from that of our passions! that it is the impropriety of our attachments to the objects lost, which renders their loss so grievous; that we are keenly afflicted only when we had been keenly attached; and that the excess of our afflictions is always the punishment of the excess of our iniquitous loves. I might add, that we always magnify whatever regards ourselves; that the very idea of singularity in our misfortunes flatters our vanity, at the same time that it authorizes our murmurs; that we never wish to resemble others; that we feel a secret pleasure in persuading ourselves that we are single of our kind; we wish all the world to be occupied with our misfortunes alone, as if we were the only unfortunate of the earth. Yes, my brethren, the evils of others are nothing in our eyes: we see not that all around us are, perhaps, more unhappy than we; that we have a thousand resources in our afflictions, which are denied to others; that we derive a thousand consolations in our infirmities, from wealth, and the number of persons watchful over our smallest wants; that, in the loss of a person dear to us, a thousand means of softening its bitterness still remain from the situation in which Providence hath placed us: that, in domestic divisions, we find comforts in the tenderness and in the confidence of our friends, which we had been unable to procure among our relatives; lastly, that we find a thousand human indemnifications to our misfortunes, and that, were we to place in a balance, on the one side our consolations, and on the other our sufferings, we should find, that there are still remaining in our state more comforts capable of corrupting us, than crosses calculated to sanctify us.
Thus, it is almost solely the great and the prosperous of the world who complain of the excess of their misfortunes and sufferings. The unfortunate majority of the earth, who are born to, and live in, penury and distress, pass in silence, and almost in the neglect of their sufferings, their wretched days. The smallest gleam of comfort and ease restores serenity and cheerfulness to their heart: the slightest consolations obliterate their troubles: a moment of pleasure makes up for a whole year of sufferance; while those fortunate and sensual souls, amidst all their abundance, are seen to reckon, as an unheard of misfortune, the disappointment of a single desire. We view them turning into a martyrdom for themselves, the weariness and even the satiety of pleasures; drawing from imaginary evils the source of a thousand real vexations; feeling ten-fold more anguish for the failure of a single acquisition, than pleasure in the possession of all they enjoy: in a word, considering as the greatest misfortune the least interruption, however trifling, to their sensual happiness.
Yes, my brethren, it is the great and powerful alone who complain; who continually imagine themselves the only unhappy; who never have enough of comforters; who, on the slightest reverse, see assembled around them, not only those worldly friends whom their rank and fortune procure, but likewise all the pious and enlightened ministers of the gospel, distinguished by the public esteem, and whose holy instructions would, in general, be much better bestowed on so many other unfortunate individuals who are destitute of every worldly resource and religious assistance, and to whom they would likewise be so much more beneficial. But, before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, your afflictions shall be weighed with those of so many of your unfortunate fellow-creatures, and whose misfortunes are so much the more dreadful as they are more hidden and more neglected. It will then be demanded of you, if it belonged to you to complain and to murmur. It will be demanded, if you were entitled to lay such stress upon calamities which would have been consolations to so many others: if it was your business to murmur so highly against a God who treated you with such indulgence, while his hand was so heavy on such an infinity of unhappy fellow-creatures: if they had less right to the riches and to the pleasure of the earth than you: if their soul was less noble, and less precious before God, than yours i in a word, if they were either more criminal, or of another nature than you?
Alas! it is not only our own self-love, but it is likewise our hardness toward our brethren, which magnifies to us our own misfortunes. Let us enter those poor, unprovided dwellings, where shame conceals such bitter and affecting poverty; let us view those asylums of public compassion where every calamity seems to reign: it is there that we shall learn to appreciate our own afflictions: it is there that, touched to the heart with the excess of so many evils, we shall blush to give even a name to the slightness of ours: it is there that our murmurs against Heaven shall be changed into thanksgivings, and that, less taken up with the slight crosses sent us by the Lord, than with so many others from which he spareth us, we shall begin to dread his indulgence, far from complaining of his severity. My God! how awful shall be the judgment of the great and the mighty, since, besides the inevitable abuse of their prosperity, the afflictions, which ought to have sanctified its use and expiated its abuses, shall become themselves their greatest crimes!
But how employ afflictions in sanctifying the dangers of their station, or in working out salvation, since they seem to cast such invincible obstacles in their way? This is the last pretext drawn from the incompatibility which afflictions seem to have with our salvation.
Part III. — It is very surprising, that the corruption of the human heart finds, even in sufferances, obstacles to salvation, and that Christians continually justify their murmurs against the wisdom and the goodness of God, by accusing him of sending crosses incompatibJe with their eternal salvation. Nothing is more common, however, in the world, than this iniquitous language; and when we exhort the souls afflicted by God to convert these fleeting afflictions into the price of heaven and of eternity, they reply, that, in this state of distress, they are incapable of every thing; that the obstacles and vexations which they are continually encountering, far from recalling them to order and to duty, serve only to irritate the mind, and to harden the heart; and that tranquillity must be restored before they can turn their thoughts toward God.
Now, I say, that, of all the pretexts employed in justification of the unchristian use made of afflictions, this is the most absurd and the most culpable. The most culpable, for it is blaspheming Providence to pretend, that it places you in situations incompatible with your salvation. Whatever it doth or permitteth here below, it only doth or permitteth in order to facilitate to men the ways of eternal life: every event, prosperous or unprosperous, in the measure of our lot, is meant by it as a mean of salvation, and of sanctification; all its designs upon us tend to that sole purpose; whatever we are, even in the order of nature, our birth, our fortune, our talents, our age, our dignities, our protectors, our subjects, our masters! — all this, in its views of mercy upon us, enters into the impenetrable designs of our eternal sanctification. All this visible world itself is made only for the age to come; whatever passeth, hath its secret connexions with that eternal age, where things shall pass no more; whatever we see, is only the image and trust of the invisible things. The world is worthy of the cares of a wise and merciful God, only inasmuch as, by secret and adorable relations, its diverse revolutions are to form that heavenly church, that immortal assembly of chosen, where he shall ever be glorified. To pretend, then, that he placeth us in situations, which not only have no relation to, but are even incompatible with our eternal interests, is to make a temporal God of him, and to blaspheme his adorable wisdom.
But, not only nothing is more culpable than this pretext, — I say, likewise, that nothing is more foolish: for, it is only by detaching itself from this miserable world, that a soul returns to God; and nothing, says St. Augustine, so effectually detaches from this miserable world, as when the Lord sheddeth salutary sorrows over its dangerous pleasures. "Lord," said a holy king of Judah, (iI had neglected thee in prosperity and in abundance; the pleasures of royalty, and the splendour of a long and glorious reign, had corrupted my heart: the flatteries and the deceitful words of the wicked had lulled me into a profound and a fatal sleep; but thine hand hath been upon me, in pouring out upon my people all the scourges of thy wrath, in raising up against me mine own children and subjects, whom I loaded with favours; and I awoke. Thou hast humbled me, and I have had recourse to thee; thou hast afflicted me, and I have sought thee, and I have found out that I ought not to have my trust in men; that prosperity is a dream; glory a mistake; the talents which men admire, vices concealed under the brilliant outsides of human virtues; the whole world a deception, which feeds us with only vain phantoms, and leaves nothing solid in the heart; and that thou alone art worthy to be served, for thou alone forsakest not those who serve thee."
Behold the most natural effect of afflictions; they facilitate all the duties of religion; hatred of the world, in rendering it more disagreeable to us; indifference toward all creatures, by giving us experience, either of their perfidy by infidelities, or of their frailty by unexpected losses; privation of pleasures, by placing obstacles in their way; the desire of eternal riches, and consoling returns toward God, by leaving us almost no consolation among men; lastly, all the obligations of faith become more easy to the afflicted soul; his good desires find fewer obstacles, his weakness fewer rocks, his faith more aids, his lukewarmness more resources, his passions more checks, and even his virtues more meritorious opportunities.
Thus the church was never more fervent and purer than when she was afflicted; the ages of her sufferings and persecutions were the ages of her splendour and of her zeal. Tranquillity afterward corrupted her manners; her days became less pure and less innocent as soon as they became more fortunate and powerful; her glory ended almost with her misfortunes; and her peace, as the prophet said, was more bitter, through the licentiousness of her children, than even her troubles had ever been through the barbarity of her enemies.
Even you who complain that the crosses with which the Lord afflicteth you discourage you, and check any desire of labouring toward your salvation; you well know that happier days have not been for you more holy and more faithful; you well know that then, intoxicated with the world and its pleasures, you lived in a total neglect of your God, and that the comforts of your situation were only the spurs of your corruption, and the instruments of your iniquitous desires.
But such is the perpetual illusion of our self-love. When fortunate, when every thing answers to our wishes, and the world smiles upon us, then we allege the dangers of our state to justify the errors of our worldly manners: we say that it is very difficult, at a certain age and in a certain situation, when a rank is to be supported, and appearances to be kept up with the world, to condemn ourselves to solitude, to prayer, to flight from pleasures, and to all the duties of a gloomy and a Christian life. But on the other side, when under affliction; when the body is struck with lassitude, and fortune forsakes us; when our friends deceive, and our masters neglect us; when our enemies overpower, and our relations become our persecutors; we complain that every thing estranges us from God in this state of bitterness and sorrow; that the mind is not sufficiently tranquil to devote any thoughts to salvation; that the heart is too exasperated to feel any thing but its own misfortunes; that amusements and pleasures, now become necessary, must be sought to lull its grief, and to prevent the total loss of reason, in giving way to all the horrors of a profound melancholy. It is thus, O my God! that by our eternal contradictions we justify the adorable ways of thy wisdom upon the lots of men, and that we provide for thy justice powerful reasons to overthrow one day the illusion, and the falsity of our pretexts.
For, besides, be our sufferings what they may, the history of religion holds out righteous characters to our example, who, in the same situation as we are, have held their soul in patience, and turned their afflictions into a resource of salvation. Do you weep the loss of a person dear to your heart? Judith in a similar affliction found the increase of her piety and faith, and changed the tears of her widowhood into those of retirement and penitence. If a pining health render life more gloomy and bitter than even death itself, Job found in the wrecks of an ulcerated body, motives of compunction, longings for eternity, and the hopes of an immortal resurrection. If your character in the world be stained by calumnies, Susanna held out an unshaken soul under the blackest aspersions; and knowing that she had the Lord in testimony of her innocence, she left to him the care of avenging her upon the injustice of. men. If your fortune be the victim of treachery, David, dethroned, considered the humiliation of his new state as the just punishment of the abuse he had made of his past prosperity. If an unfortunate union become your daily cross, Esther found, in the caprices and frenzies of a faithless husband, the proof of her virtue, and the merit of her meekness and patience. In a word, place yourself in the most dismal situations, and you will find righteous men, who have wrought out their salvation, in the same; and, without applying to former ages for examples, look around, (the hand of the Lord is not yet shortened,) and you will see souls, who, loaded with the same crosses as you, make a very different use of them, and find means of salvation in the very same events where you find only a rock to your innocence or a pretext for your murmurs. What do I say? — you will see souls whom the mercy of God hath recalled from their errors, by pouring out salutary sorrows upon their life; by overturning an established fortune; by chilling an envied favour; by sapping a health apparently unalterable; by terminating a profane connexion through a glaring inconstancy. You yourself, then, a witness of their change and of their conversion, have lessened the merit of it, from the facilities provided by chagrin and afflictions; you have placed little confidence in a virtue which misfortunes had rendered as if necessary; you have said that it required little exertion to forsake a world which has become tired of us; that at the first gleam of good fortune, pleasures would soon be seen to succeed to all this great show of devotion, and that they had devoted themselves to God only because they had nothing better to do. Unjust that you are! and at present, when there is question of returning to him in your affliction, you say that it is not possible; that a heart pressed and bowed down with sorrow is incapable of paying attention to any thing but its grief, and that we are more hardened than touched in this state of distress and misfortune; and after having censured and cast a stain upon the piety of afflicted souls, as a measure too easy, and to which little merit is attached, as it required almost no exertion, you excuse yourself from adopting it in your affliction, and from making a Christian use of it, because you pretend that it is not possible in it to pay attention to any thing but to your sorrow. Answer, or rather tremble, lest you find the rock of your salvation in a situation which ought to be its surest resource. After having abused prosperity, tremble lest you now make your misfortunes the fatal instruments of your destruction, and lest you shut upon yourself all the ways of goodness which God might open to you in order to recall you to him.
When, O my God! will the time come that my soul, exalting itself through faith above all creatures, shall no longer worship but thee in them; shall no longer attribute events to them of which thou alone art the author; shall recognise, in the diverse situations in which thou placest it, the adorable arrangements of thy providence; and, even amid all its crosses, shall taste that unalterable peace which the world, with all its pleasures, can never bestow? How melancholy, in effect, my brethren, when visited and afflicted of God, to seek for consolation in rising up against the hand which strikes us; in murmuring against his justice; in casting ourselves off from him, as it were in a frenzy of rage, despair, and revenge, and to seek consolation in our madness! What a horrible situation is that of a foolish soul whom God afflicteth, and who for consolation flies in the face of his God; seeks to ease his troubles in multiplying his trespasses; yields himself up to debauchery, in order to drown his sorrows; and makes the overwhelming sadness of guilt a horrible resource against the sadness of his afflictions!
No, my brethren, religion alone can truly console us in our misfortunes. Philosophy checked complaints, but it did not soften the anguish. The world lulls cares, but it does not cure them: and, amidst all its senseless pleasures, the secret sting of sadness always remains buried in the heart. God alone can comfort our afflictions; and is another necessary to a faithful soul? Weak creatures! You may easily, by vain speeches, and by that customary language of compassion and tenderness, make yourselves to be understood by the ears of the body; but there is none but the God of all consolation who can speak to the heart: in the excess of my pains, I have vainly sought consolation among ye: I have sharpened my sufferings, while thinking to soften them, and thy vain consolations have been to me only fresh sorrows.
Great God! it is at thy feet, that I mean henceforth to pour out all the bitterness of mine heart. It is with thee alone, that I mean to forget all my grievances, all my sufferings, all creatures. Hitherto I have given way to chagrins and to sadness altogether human; a thousand times have I wished that thy wisdom were regulated by the mad projects of my heart: my thoughts have wandered; my mind hath formed a thousand delusive dreams; my heart hath pursued these vain phantoms. I have longed for a higher birth, more fortune, talents, fame, and health. I have lulled myself in these ideas of an imaginary happiness. Fool that I am I as if I were capable of altering at my pleasure the immutable order of thy Providence! As if I had been wiser or more enlightened than thee, O my God, upon my true interests! I have never entered into thine eternal designs upon me. I have never considered the sorrows of my situation as entering into the order of my eternal destination; and, even to this day, my joys and my sorrows have depended upon the created alone; consequently my joys have never been tranquil, and my sorrows have always been without resource. But henceforth, O my God! thou shalt be my only comforter, and I will seek, in the meditation of thy holy law, and in my submission to thine eternal decrees, those solid consolations which I have never found in the world, and which, in softening our afflictions here below, secure to us, at the same time, their immortal reward hereafter.