Job 21:34

REFLECTIONS

READER! let us pause over the perusal of this chapter, and, for the moment, drop the recollection of both Job and his friends, to bring the subject itself a little nearer home, as it concerns the same circumstances here described in the present day in which we dwell.

If we look at human life as it appears in the great mass of men, what a confused state of affairs it seems! In the bulk, no doubt, as to outward things, the ungodly and the despisers of GOD are the most prosperous. They are as Job hath here described them. Hence if we allowed ourselves to reason from outside show, we should frequently pronounce the sinner happy, and the saint miserable. But what an erroneous calculation should we then make! To form a proper estimate even of the real enjoyment of prosperous circumstances, we must look within as well as without. We must follow the great man, or the rich man, into his retirement. We must see him according to what he feels and what he confesses, and not by what the world have concluded concerning his real happiness. And if we were to do this, we should discover many an aching heart in a fine house; and many a miserable man, who to the world looks gay and smiling. So that even in respect to the happiness of this life, the prosperous sinner hath not the best of it. And uniformly is it found, that they who follow the world, as well as they who follow CHRIST, must and do take up a cross; and sometimes a very heavy galling cross to such it is.

But whatever be the enjoyments of the sinner here, what can be the frothy unsatisfying pleasures of the whole carnal world, compared with that glory which shall be revealed? Oh! precious JESUS! in the recollection of thee and of thy presence, how doth everything sink to nothing in the view of the soul. Truly hast thou promised that, in this life, they that love thee shall inherit substance, and that thou wilt fill all their treasures. And solid, satisfying, and substantial, all thy mercies are. But who shall describe, or what heart shall conceive, the nature, the extent, the durableness, the vast joys which thou hast laid up for, and which thou art thyself to impart to, thy redeemed in glory! LORD! let a conviction of them continually warm my soul, and animate my heart; and do thou enable me, oh! thou bountiful LORD! so to pursue thee, in all the paths of grace here below, that I may at length attain to that glory which shall be revealed; to the everlasting enjoyment of the presence of GOD and the LAMB, and those unspeakable felicities which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, but which are at thy right hand forevermore.