People are, as I
told you, too apt to say that the Old Testament saints got their rewards
in this life, while we shall get them in the next. Do they find that in
Scripture? If they will read their Bible they will find that the Old
Testament saints were men whom God was training and educating, as He does
us, by experience and by suffering. That David, so far from having his
reward at once in this life, had his bitter sorrows and trials; that
Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, all, indeed, of the old prophets, had to be
made perfect by suffering, and (as St. Paul says) died in faith NOT
having received the promises. So that if they had their reward in this
life, it must have been a spiritual reward, the reward of a good
conscience, and of the favour of Almighty God. And that is no transitory
or passing reward, but enduring as immortality itself. But people do not
usually care for that spiritual reward. Their notion of reward and
happiness is that they are to have all sorts of pleasures, they know not
what, and know not really why. And because they cannot get pleasant
things enough to satisfy them in this life, they look forward greedily to
getting them in the next life; and meanwhile are discontented with God's
Providence, and talk of God's good world as if some fiend and not the
Lord Jesus Christ was the maker and ruler thereof.
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