MEDITATION VI.

HEZEKIAH'S SONG OF THANKSGIVING AFTER HIS SICKNESS.

“ The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered from his sickness : I said, in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living : I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life : he will cut me off with pining sickness : from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. I reckoned till morning that as a lion, so will he break all my bones : from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter : I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward : O Lord, I am oppressed ; undertake for me.

What shall I say ? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it; I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit : so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness : hut thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of cor. ruption : for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee : they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth. The Lord was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.' ISAIAH Xxxviii. 9-20.

We read in the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke's gospel, that when our Lord healed the ten lepers, one only of them, who was a Samaritan,“ turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down at the feet of Jesus, giving him thanks ;" to whom the Lord

answering said, Were there not ten cleansed ? but where are the nine? There are not found

a

returned to give glory to God, save this stranger." Luke xvii. 12—18. Is there not in each one of us the same principle of ingratitude which our Lord encountered with grief in these nine lepers ? Could we recall to mind all the benefits which the Lord has bestowed upon us, and were we to make a fair calculation, would we find that for one out of ten we had “glorified God with a loud voice, falling down at his feet to give him thanks ?” Alas ! when we consider how little congenial thanksgiving is to our hearts, we have reason to acknowledge that it is in itself a gift of God, and to say with David, whenever we take the language of praise upon our lips, “He hath put a new song

in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” Ps. xl. 3. This grace of glorifying God, after deliverance from trouble, was vouchsafed to Hezekiah : and we have here “the writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness.”

When Hezekiah was restored to health, he thought fit to commit to writing the feelings which he had experienced either during his sickness or after his recovery; doubtless that he might the longer retain the humiliating remembrance of the moments of weakness and despondency through which he had passed, as well as that of the

power

and
mercy

of God who had succoured him in his distress. He thought that in perusing the record of these feelings, and the expressions of the gratitude which he had experienced in the first moments of his recovery, he would have a means of renewing those salutary impressions, and reviving them when they were about to fade away.

Before we begin our meditations upon the details of this "writing of Hezekiah,” we would inform you, that it contains many difficult passages, upon which we

by the

have not been able to form any decided opinion. But, grace

of God, we shall not be ashamed to confess our ignorance where we are obliged to be ignorant ; we shall leave to the Lord our God those secret things which belong to him, and take for ourselves and our children, to do them, those things which his Spirit hath revealed.

The writing of Hezekiah begins by recalling those feelings of distress which he had experienced during his sickness. Upon this we repeat a remark which we have already made in meditating upon the history of this prince, namely, with how much more simplicity the believers, of whom we read in the Scriptures, generally relate their inward trials, and speak of their feelings and infirmities, than we do. We have produced many instances of this simplicity, and the confessions of Hezekiah as here recorded afford an additional example. Ah, how easy is it to make a parade of our courage when the danger is past, and when we are delivered from our trials ; to say we had no fears, we were resigned, supported! How easy is it to act like those boasters of human courage, who, when the battle is over, brag of their achievements, while the really brave are engaged in dressing their wounds which speak for them! But these vauntings are not what the Lord is pleased with. Though he tells us to “rejoice in the Lord always," to "glory even in tribulation," yet he “

, knows that our actual experience will often come short of this, and as he loves truth, he is not pleased with us when we speak of ourselves according to what weought to be, and not according to what we really are. Let us beware of this; it is a source of great mistakes, to eonfound our knowledge with our practice,-what we know with what we do. O may we feel more comfort in freely. confessing our sins and rebellions, that

we may thus be brought to a salutary humiliation and self-abasement, and find pardon and healing at the feet of the Lord ! In this respect, how much more instructive and consoling are the lives recorded in the Bible than many of those which are written in our own day! In these we scarcely see the believer except under the aspect of the “new man;" we find him always happy, always strong, and always rejoicing ; and, in reading such lives, one is almost tempted to say, Am I a child of God, I who yet find in myself so much weakness ? Brethren, ye who are discouraged by this description of religious fictions, come with me to the Word of God which is truth, and which will shew you believers “subject to like passions as we are," James v. 17; believers who

cry
with us,

“ The good that I would I do not ; but the evil which I would not, that I do," Rom. vii. 19; believers exhibited with their falls, their contests, their fears, but at the same time with their repentance, their victories, and the continual exemplification of the Lord's “strength made perfect in their weakness.” In reading those true accounts of the life of believers whom the Scriptures have denominated “friends of God,” we shall be able to take courage, seeing that “the same afflictions have been accomplished in our brethren which have been in the world,” 1 Pet. v. 9, we shall be cheered by finding that in their weakness they have been strong ; and we shall give the more glory to God, because their infirmities testify that all their strength has been of Him.

WE SHALL NOW ENTER INTO THE DETAILS OF THE

WRITING OF HEZEKIAH.

VERSE 10_" I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years."

We see here that man is always disposed either to hope or to fear too much. In health, death is but matter of talk to him, it seems as though it would never overtake him; then when sickness comes, and when it declares itself in a serious manner, he falls into despondency,-imagines that he has no resource left, and appears disposed to say with Hezekiah, "I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years." In spiritual things, we act in the same way. When David was in prosperity, and when, by the favour of the Lord, his "mountain was made to stand strong," he said, "I shall not be moved;" but when the Lord hid his face from him, he could make this humbling confession, "Thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled."

"I am deprived of the residue of my years." How well do these words describe that delusion so natural to the human heart which imagines that, according to what we call the " course of nature," we have still a certain number of years before us, and accordingly prepare to enjoy those years as something upon which it can calculate, and which is in a manner its due! When death arrives, as in the case of Hezekiah, at the period which we call the middle of our career; when it surprises us at the age of strength and enterprize; how are we tempted to say with feelings of wonder and discontent, "I am deprived of the residue of my years." Fools that we are, to make such calculations, knowing that our breath is not in our power, and that the Lord continually exhorts us to avail ourselves of "to-day, while it is called to-day," as the only time that belongs to us. Heb. iii. 13, 14; iv. 7; 2 Cor. vi. 2. The days we have lived we can count, but not those which remain to us; the past is no longer ours, the future is not in our power, the present moment