I. We are too apt to think that peace and prosperity are the only signs of God's favour; that if a nation be religious, it is certain to thrive and be happy. But it is not so. We find from history that the times in which nations have shown most nobleness, most courage, most righteousness, have been times of trouble, and danger, and terror. When nations have been invaded, persecuted, trampled under foot by tyrants, then, to the astonishment of the world, they have become greater than themselves, and done deeds which win them glory for ever.
II. What is true of nations is often true also of each single person. To almost every man, at least once in his life, comes a time of trial or crisis, a time when God purges the man, and tries him in the fire, and burns up the dross in him, that the pure, sterling gold only may be left. To some it comes in the shape of some terrible loss or affliction. To others it comes in the shape of some great temptation. Nay, if we will consider, it comes to us all, perhaps often, in that shape. A man is brought to a point where he must choose between right and wrong. God puts him where the two roads part. One way turns off to the broad road which leads to destruction; the other way turns off to the narrow road which leads to life. If he believes in the living God and in the living Christ, then when temptation comes he will be able to stand. If he believes that Christ is dwelling in him, that whatever wish to do right he has comes from Christ, whatever sense of honour and honesty he has comes from Christ, then it will seem to him a dreadful thing to lie, to play the hypocrite or the coward, to sin against his own better feelings. It will be sinning against Christ Himself.
C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons,p. 370.
References: 2 Kings 19:15-19. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 521. 2 Kings 19:34. C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times,p. 183.