Oh, when every providence of God unto thee is like the messengers of Job, and the last to bring more heavy tidings than all that went before him; when life, estate, wife, children, body and soul, and all at once, seem to be struck at by heaven and earth, here are hard lessons--now to behave myself even as a weaned child: now to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Our afflictions work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Our afflictions do it, not only because there is laid up a reward for the afflicted according to the measure of affliction, but because afflictions, and so every service of God, make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and bear more. Let Christians beware that they set not times for God, lest all men see their folly. "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power;" yea, I say again, take heed lest, for thy setting of God a seven-day's time, he set thee so many as seven times seven. God's time is the time, the best time, because it is the time appointed by him for the proof and trial of our graces, and that in which so much of the rage of the enemy and of the power of God's mercy, may the better be discovered unto us. "I the Lord do hasten it in his time;" not before, though we were the signet upon his hand. Afflictions are governed by God, both as to time, number, nature, and measure. In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of his east wind." Our times, therefore, and our conditions in these times, are in the hand of God, yea, and so are our souls and bodies, to be kept and preserved from the evil while the rod of God is upon us. Ease and release from persecution and affliction come not by chance, or by the good moods and gentle dispositions of men; but the Lord doth hold them back from sin, the Lord restraineth them. 2 Chron. 18:31. "And he stayed yet other seven days." It is not God's way with his people to show them all their troubles at once, but first he shows them a part: first, forty days, after that, seven other days, and yet again, seven days more; that coming upon them by piecemeal, they may the better be able to travel through them. When Israel was in affliction in Egypt, they knew not the trial which would meet them at the Red sea. Again, when they had gone through that, they little thought that yet for forty years they must be tempted and proved in the wilderness. "And Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked;" the failing again of his expected comforter caused him to be up and doing. Probably he had not as yet uncovered the ark, that is, to look round about him, if the dove, by returning, had pleased his humor; but she failing, he stirs up himself.