wages which I am paid are my just due, I am a free man, and may
choose what master I like." Suppose any one of YOUR servants
treated you so, would you not be inclined to answer, "You are a
faithless, ungrateful fellow; go your ways, then, and see how little
you can do without my bounty?" But the blessed King in heaven,
though He is provoked every day, is more long-suffering than man.
All He does is to withdraw His bounty for a moment, to take this
world's blessings from a man, and let him find out how impossible it
is for him to keep himself out of affliction--to take away His Holy
Spirit for a moment from a man, and let him see how straight he
rushes astray, and every way but the right; and then, if the man is
humbled by his fall or his affliction, and comes back to his Lord,
confessing how weak he is and promising to trust in Christ and thank
Christ only for the future, THEN our Lord will restore His blessings
to him, and there will be joy among the angels of God over one
sinner that repents. This was the way in which God treated Job
when, in spite of all his excellence, HIS heart was lifted up. And
then, when he saw his own folly, and abhorred himself, and repented
in dust and ashes, God restored to him sevenfold what He had taken
from him--honour, wisdom, riches, home, and children. This is the
way, too, in which God treated David. "In my prosperity," he tells
us, "I said, I shall never be moved; thou, Lord, of Thy goodness
hast made my hill so strong"--forgetting that he must be kept safe
every moment of his life, as well as made safe once for all. "Thou
didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. Then cried I unto
Thee, O Lord, and gat me to my Lord right humbly. And THEN," he
adds, "God turned my heaviness into joy, and girded me with
gladness," (Psalm xxx.) And again, he says, "BEFORE I was troubled
I went wrong, but NOW I have kept Thy word," (Psalm cxix.) And this
is the way in which Christ the Lord treated St. Peter and St. Paul,