The Bondage in Egypt

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1859

The Bondage in Egypt.

How strange it must have seemed to those Hebrews who thought much of God, and pondered upon his old promises to them and theirs, that he should let such long time pass, and leave them to suffer such dreadful affliction, without the least sign of interference for their help. How easy it would have been for their weak faith to utterly die, and for them to say, ‘There cannot be any God—or, if there be a God, he has forgotten his promise, and forsaken his chosen ones.’

And yet God never loved them more; never was causing all things more really to work together for their good, never more really deserved their faith and love, than during this very period of darkness. They came out of that Egyptian bondage welded together by mutual hopes and fears, and common trials in the furnace of affliction—fitted as they never were before, never could have been, without that experience—to do, for God and man, the work which God had for them to do; which the world was waiting for at their hands. Just so it is with us. Those dark hours of trial—when every thing goes wrong, and it seems as if we were forsaken of God and man—are often the period when the forces that we most need are working upon our characters, and shaping us for a usefulness and a comfort unknown and impossible without it.

The true Christian will sing in his darkest hour, in the gloom of the Egyptian night which is upon him:

‘I cannot call affliction sweet, And yet ‘tis good to bear; Affliction brings me to thy feet, And I find comfort there.’ —Cong.