Sermon Illustration

It is good for man to suffer the adversity of this earthly life, for it brings him back to the sacred retirement of the heart, where only he finds he is an exile from his native home, and ought not to place his trust in any worldly enjoyment. It is good for him also to meet with contradiction and reproach, and to be evil thought of, and evil spoken of, even when his intentions are upright and his actions blameless, for this keeps him humble, and is a powerful antidote to the poison of vain-glory: and then chiefly it is that we have recourse to the witness within us, which is God, when we are outwardly despised, and held in no degree of esteem and favor among men. Our dependence upon Him ought to be so entire and absolute that we should never think it necessary, in any kind of distress, to have recourse to human consolation.

It was said by Robert Hall that, “God, in His moral government of the world, has various methods and complicated machinery by which He excites the heart, the constitution of which none can know so well as He. Some He terrifies by His frowns, some he wins by his smiles; to some He throws in rich profusion all the bounties of His providence, to excite their gratitude; some He bereaves of their all, and tracks their footsteps with misfortune and desolation, in order that they may know the vanity and real worthlessness of all earthly possessions and enjoyments, and feel the full consolation of that refuge of which they may always avail themselves, in order that they may seek, like some battered bark, broken and tempest-worn, some haven, secure from the storms which sweep over the open ocean.”

The Latin poet Horace lays down the axiom that “adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” Sir Walter Scott compares adversity to the period of the former and of the latter rain—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.

Whitefield says that: “All trials are sent for two ends—that we may be better acquainted with the Lord Jesus, and with our own wicked hearts.”

General Hill, writing of Stonewall Jackson, says: “Invidious critics have attributed many of Jackson’s successes to lucky blunders, or at best to happy inspirations at the moment of striking. Never was there a greater mistake. He studied carefully (shall I add prayerfully?) all his own and his adversaries’ movements. He knew the situation perfectly, the geography and topography of the country, the character of the officers opposed to him, the number and material of his troops. He never joined battle without a thorough personal reconnaissance of the field. That duty he never trusted to any engineer officer.”