Who is among you walking in darkness, that yet fears to offend God as much as hell, and endeavoureth and desires to obey him in all things as much as to go to heaven? Such, when they find God withdraw, and their hearts left comfortless, their spirits dead and hard, do call God’s love and their own estates into question; especially if they were in the sunshine before, but now sit ‘in the valley of the shadow of death.’
Once they never looked to heaven but they had a smile; now they may cry day and night and not get a good look from him. Once, say they, they never hoist up sail to any duty, but they had a fair and good wind, God went along with them; but now they have both wind and tide, God and the deadness of their own hearts, against them. In a word, God is gone, light is gone: God answers them neither by vision nor by prophets; neither in praying nor in hearing; and therefore hath forsaken them, cast them off, yea, will never be merciful. Oh, woe to us, say they, we are undone!
You err, poor souls, not knowing the Scriptures, and the manner of your God, and of his dealings with his people, to think that his mind is changed when his countenance is, and so to run away from him, as Jacob did from Laban; to think he hath cast you off, when he is but ‘returning to his place,’ that you may ‘seek him more earnestly,’ Hos. 5:15. Like children, when their mother is gone aside a little, you fall a-crying as if you were undone.
So it is that you are always in the extremes: if he shines on you, then ‘your mountain shall never be removed;’ if he hides his face, then ‘he will never be merciful.’ This, as it is a fond and childish fault, so it is beastly and brutish also, thus to judge. I term it so because you are led therein by sense, and, like beasts, believe nothing but what you feel and see, and measure God’s love by his looks and outward carriage; which when Asaph did in other afflictions, as you in this, he cries out he was ‘ignorant, and as a beast,’ Ps. 73:22. What! will you trust God no further than you see him? It will shame you one day to think what a great deal of trouble your childishness put the Spirit of God unto. As what trouble is it to a wise man, to have a fond and foolish wife, who if he be but abroad, and about necessary business, haply for her maintenance, yet then she complains he regards her not, but leaves her; if he chides her for any fault, then she says he hates her, and is so much distempered by it as a whole day’s kindness cannot quiet her again? Thus deal you with God, and though he hath given you never so many fair and clear evidences of his love, and these never so often reiterated and renewed, yet still you are jealous, never quiet, always doubting, questioning all upon the least frown; that either God must undo you, by letting you go on in your sinful dispositions, without ever rebuking of you, or else lose the acknowledgment of all his love formerly shewn, and have it called in question by your peevish, jealous misconstructions, upon every small expression of his anger towards you.
But you that are more deeply and lastingly distressed, I pity you, I blame you not for being troubled; for when ‘he hides his face, the creatures all are troubled,’ Ps. 104:29. God would have you lay it to heart when he is angry, Isa. 57:17. God there took it ill that ‘when he smote him, he went on stubbornly.’ If you should not thus lay it to heart, it were a sign you had no grace; that you made not him your portion, if you could bear his absence and not mourn. Carnal men, having other comforts, can bear the want and absence of him well enough; but not you, that have made him your portion, and your exceeding great reward. But yet though you are to lay it to heart, so as to mourn under it; yet not to be discouraged, to call all into question. For though you change, yet not God, Mal. 3:6, James 1:7; nor his love, for his love is himself, 1 John 4:8–10. We may change in our apprehensions and opinions, and God’s outward carriages and dispensations may be changed towards us, but not his rooted love. We are not the same to-day that yesterday we were; but ‘Christ is the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever,’ Heb. 13:8. To say that he hath cast you off because he hath hid his face, is a fallacy fetched out of the devil’s topics, and injurious to him; for, Isa. 54:8, ‘In a little wrath have I hid my face for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I remember thee.’ I have but ‘hid my face,’ not cast thee out of mind; and though in ‘anger’, yet but a ‘little’ anger; and not long neither, but ‘for a moment.’ And all that while I am not unmindful of thee, ‘I remember thee,’ &c.; and this with ‘kindness from everlasting to everlasting.’ When the sun is eclipsed, (which eclipse is rather of the earth than of the sun, which shines as it did,) foolish people think it will never recover light, but wise men know it will.
Obj.—But you will say, If this desertion were but for a moment, it were something; but mine hath been for many years.
Ans.—How many years? This life is but a moment; and God hath eternity of time to shew his love in; time enough to make amends for a few frowns; ‘everlasting kindnesses.’ Remember the text says, one that fears God may walk in darkness; not for a step or two, but many wearisome turns in it. Heman was afflicted from his youth; David so long, that, Ps. 77, he thought God had forgotten mercy. And doth his promise fail for over? Remember what he said in another case, Luke 18:8, that though he bears long, yet he comes speedily; that is, though long in our eyes, yet speedily in his own, who hath all time before him, and knows how much time is behind to be spent in embraces with you.
Thomas Goodwin. A Child of Light Walking in Darkness.
