This question suggests two considerations; each of which demonstrates the injustice of the complaint Why should a living man complain? A living man! Life is still left thee; and of whatsoever thou hast been stripped, there is such a counterpoise in the continuance of life that complaint must be groundless. " A man for the punishment of his sins." There hath nothing befallen thee save the just recompense of thy misdoing. How can a complaint against justice be itself just. Thus are these two arguments of the text demonstrative of the unfairness of human complaint when the dealings of the Most High pass under review. These two arguments we will apply (1) to God's general dealings; (2) to His individual.
I. How easy and how common it is to discourse in a querulous and reproachful strain, on the fact of our being made to suffer for a forefather's transgressions, and on the fact of our deriving a polluted nature from guilt in which personally we took not any share. We forget, that although we did not ourselves elect Adam to act as our representative, we should, almost beyond doubt, have elected him, had it been put to our choice. For there was an infinitely greater probability that Adam, with the fate of millions committed to his keeping, would have watched diligently against the assaults of temptation, than that any lonely individual of his descendants, left to obey for himself and disobey for himself, should have maintained his allegiance and preserved his fidelity. In appointing mankind to stand or fall in Adam, God dealt with them by a measure of the widest benevolence. If so, complaint is at once removed by the second consideration which our text suggests. If there was nothing unjust in God's appointing Adam to act as our representative, then there is nothing inconsistent either with the strictest justice or the amplest benevolence in our being accounted to have sinned in Adam.
II. Consider the application of the text to the complaints called forth by individual affliction. (1) Our text represents affliction as a punishment, not of this sin, or of that sin, but generally for the punishment of man's sins. Therefore the complaint is to be met not by any demonstration that by one particular line of conduct the complaining individual has brought down a particular judgment, but simply by the fact of general sinfulness. When you remember that man is a transgressor, not only by imputation, but by every positive and personal working of evil, surely the marvel must be, not that so much of wormwood should drug the cup of human life, but that so much of sweetness should still have been left. (2) We are living men. And whatever the woe and bitterness of our portion, wherefore should living men complain? Life, when regarded as the seedtime of eternity, must appear to be so enormous in value that its sternest and most aggravated sorrows dwindle away into comparative nothingness. While man has life, he may win Christ. If it be a life of sickness, a life of widowhood, a life of captivity, yet all this deserves no mention in opposition to the privilege of existence. Life protracted may be a season when the Saviour is won, and the Saviour won is the universe our own.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2216.