Mine eyes do fail with tears.
The miseries of the Church taken to heart
1. The true ministers of God do take the miseries of the Church to heart in the greatest measure.
2. Our sorrow, humiliation, earnest prayer, and all other means of extraordinary calling upon God, must increase in us, so long as God’s heavy hand is upon us.
3. Hearty sorrow for spiritual miseries distempereth the whole body.
4. The sorrows of the soul will easily consume the body.
5. A lively member is grieved with the hurt of the body, or any member thereof.
6. The ministers of Christ should have a tender affection to the members of the Church, as a man hath to his daughter.
7. There is no outward thing so much cause of sorrow, as the miseries laid upon our children in our sight. (J. Udall.)
Compassion for sinners
It is the missionary with the fountain of pity that reaches the deepest place in the native’s heart. When Livingstone was found dead on his knees in the heart of Africa, his head was resting over his open Bible, and his finger was pointing to the last words he ever penned in his diary: “Oh, God, when will the open sore of the world be healed?” That was the profound pity which commenced the redemptive work in Africa, and which lives in emancipating influence today. (Hartley Aspen.)
They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine?--
Great grief
1. It is the greatest grief that can be, to have them whom we would gladly pleasure, seek that at our hands which we cannot help them unto.
2. When God would have us profit by any work of His, He will let us see the true cause of it.
3. The grief that is seen with the eye is the heaviest unto us of all other things that fall upon our friends.
4. When God meaneth to humble us, He will use most effectual means to bring it to pass. (J. Udall.)
What thing shall I take to witness for thee?--
Plain ministries
Ministers must be studious in the Word, to find out everything that may fit the Church’s present condition (Isaiah 50:4; Matthew 13:52).
2. It is the greatest grief that can be, to fall into a trouble that hath not been laid upon others before.
3. That minister loveth us best, that dealeth most plainly with us.
4. The visible state of the Church of God may come to be of a desperate condition, every way vexed more and more. (J. Udall.)