Micah 6:9 The LORD's voice cries to the city, and the man of wisdom shall see your name: hear you the rod, and who has appointed it. (a funeral discourse): — Our Heavenly Father employs many instruments for the moral instruction of His children, To thoughtful and docile minds He teaches many an important and useful lesson by means of His providence perpetually operating around us. It is not in times of trial and affliction alone that providence conveys lessons designed for our enlightenment and benefit. But the lessons we are very slow to learn and very ready to forget. When some sudden and saddening affliction befalls us, the mind is often aroused, the heart is softened, we are compelled to pause and reflect. A painful dispensation solemnly speaks to us. I. OF THE BREVITY AND UNCERTAINTY OF HUMAN LIFE. This is a lesson often sounded in our ears, and often addressed to our hearts. Early death is especially affecting. By it the young are urged so to live that death, whenever it may come, shall have no terror and no sting. II. OF THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE BRIGHTEST HUMAN HOPES. The vanity of human wishes, and the frequent blighting of human hopes, have been in every age the theme of the moralist, the poet, and the preacher. Ought we not all to ask ourselves whether our hopes are such as death cannot destroy? III. OF THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. When we remember that all things are under the government of God, the Only Wise, the Almighty, and the All-loving, we ought not to complain even if we cannot comprehend. God works on a scale, and for a period, so vast, that it would be both presumption and folly for short-sighted and short-lived creatures, such as we are, to expect to comprehend His plans. IV. OF THE WORTH OF A CHRISTIAN FAITH. It supports the dying, it comforts the bereaved. It enables the believer in the conflict with the last enemy to come off more than conqueror; it enables those who mourn departed friends to live in the certainty of a future and blessed reunion. (G. D. Macgregor.) Parallel Verses KJV: The LORD'S voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it. |
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