SERMON XV.

RELIGIOUS DEJECTION.

PSALM LXXVII. 10.

I said, This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.

THERE are few cases which require more compassion and more wisdom in the treatment of them than that of religious dejection. Religious melancholy is the disease of piety, and must be treated as such, if we would hope to remove it. We must consider its symptoms, endeavour to trace out its causes, and then prescribe its cure. The inspired writer of the Psalm from which the text is taken, appears to have been under its influence. He is bowed down with the pressure of affliction, he can discover no indications of God's former favour, he is filled with fearful apprehensions of his anger, with the utmost grief of mind, and with an anxiety bordering on despair; and he finds no relief for his infirmity, until he remembers the years of the right hand of the Most High; until calling to

mind the mercy and loving-kindness of God which have been ever of old, he is again enabled to hope in him, and to rejoice in his salvation..! Lethus then consider the symptoms, the cause, and the cure of religious dejection. I -music sort og et on prihodano yaronly We notice, Fas, atib bas

0

db

I. THE SYMPTOMS OF RELIGIOUS DEPRESSION The despondency of irreligious persons, when conscience has alarmed their fears, and keen disappointments have broken their spirits and filled them with forebodings of eternal punishment, is not the case we have to consider. Nor are the distresses and solicitudes of an awakened penitent, when, first convined of sin, he anxiously inquires after the way of salvation in Christ Jesus, the indications of it. These are rather favourable signs. They do not imply the existence of a disease, but they are salubrious and medicinal. Nor is the seriousness of mind which ever becomes a Christian in this world of temptation, where he is called to work out his salvation with fear and trembling, and to pass the time of his sojourning in fear, the index of religious melancholy. Neither are the occasional fluctuations in the religious feelings to which all the sincere servants of God are more or less subject, the evidences of its existence.

The proper symptoms of it are to be found in a settled depression of mind, in a perplexing

A A

9

debility and agitation of spirit, an apprehension of God's indignation, a prevailing doubt of our pardon and acceptance before him, a dark view of the events which occur in the course of God's providential dealings withous, a succession of gloomy forebodings as to our future circumstances and destination, and a sinking of the heart, especially when we turn to subjects connected with our personale interest in the blessings of redemption. The appearances will vary in different cases, but they will partake in all of the general character that has been described.

Thus Jacob, when the loss of his beloved Joseph had long distressed his mind, when he received the intelligence of the severe treatment which his other sons had met with in Egypt, and found that Benjamin must also be separated from him, exclaimed with a touching melancholy, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me. This is not, indeed, a case of settled depression; but it serves to convey an idea of it. Such feelings, if they had continued long, and had fixed themselves in the soul, would have brought down the Patriarch's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

Hannah, again, vexed by the reproaches of Peninnab, cast down at the disappointment of her hopes, and receiving no answer to her

prayers, was under a dejection of spirit. She went up to the temple, a woman of a sorrowful spirit, and out of the abundance of her complaint and grief poured out her soul before the Lord. She was in bitterness of soul. Her adversary provoked her sore. She wept, and did eat no bread. This continued year by year. These were symptoms of the disease we are to treat.

The same, under different circumstances, was the case of Naomi. She was left of her two sons and her husband in a foreign land. When she arose to return from the country of Moab, one of her daughters-in-law went back unto her people and to her gods. She arrived at Bethlehem, and all the city was moved, and said, Is this Naomi ? And she said, Call me not Naomi (pleasant), but call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the Lord hath brought me home again empty; why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me and the Almighty hath afflicted me?

The instance of Elijah may also be mentioned, when he received the threatening message from Jezebel, and arose and went for his life and came to Beersheba, and went a day's journey into the wilderness, and sat down under a juniper-tree, and requested for himself that he might die. Dejection preyed upon his mind, and he con

1

cluded that he only was left in Israel, a prophet of the Lord.

The dejection of Job assumed yet more distinctly and fully the appearance of religious depression. Hear his distressing language: Even to-day is my complaint bitter; my stroke is heavier than my groaning. The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit; the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. My sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like water. My soul is weary of life. Thou writest bitter things against me, thou holdest me for thine enemy...

The case of the Church, however, in the Prophet, and of the royal Psalmist, will furnish us with the most complete view of the symptoms. of this malady. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord? My judgment is passed over from my God? But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. This is the language of an habitual gloom of mind. It resembles that of the Psalm in which the text occurs. In the day of my trouble, exclaims the sacred author, I sought the Lord; my sore ran in the night and ceased not-he prayed earnestly, but found no consolation. My soul refused to be comforted-a fixed melancholy seized him. I remembered God and was troubled even