11 JANUARY (UNDATED SERMON)

A woman of a sorrowful spirit

‘Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit.’ 1 Samuel 1:15
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Jeremiah 45:1–5

Affliction and suffering are not proofs of sonship, for ‘Many sorrows shall be to the wicked’; and yet, where there are great tribulations, it often happens that there are great manifestations of the divine favour. There is a ‘sorrow of the world’ that ‘worketh death’, a sorrow which springs from self-will, and is nurtured in rebellion, and is therefore an evil thing, because it is opposed to the divine will. There is a sorrow which ‘will eat as doth a canker’, and breeds yet greater sorrows, so that such mourners descend with their sorrowful spirits down to the place where sorrow reigns supreme, and hope shall never come. Think of this, but never doubt the fact that a sorrowful spirit is in perfect consistency with the love of God, and the possession of true godliness.

It is freely admitted that godliness ought to cheer many a sorrowful spirit more than it does. It is also admitted that much of the experience of Christians is no Christian experience, but a mournful departure from what true believers ought to be and feel. There is very much that Christians experience which they never ought to experience. Half the troubles of life are homemade, and utterly unnecessary. We afflict ourselves perhaps, ten times more than God afflicts us. We add many thongs to God’s whip: when there would be but one we must make nine. God sends one cloud by his providence, and we raise a score by our unbelief.

But taking all that off, and making the still further abatement that the Gospel commands us to rejoice in the Lord always, and that it would never bid us do so if there were not abundant causes and arguments for it, yet, for all that, a sorrowful spirit may be possessed by one who most truly and deeply fears the Lord. Never judge those whom you see sad, and write them down as under the divine anger, for you might err most grievously and most cruelly in making so rash a judgment. Fools despise the afflicted, but wise men prize them.

FOR MEDITATION: (Our Own Hymn Book no. 703 v. 4—Horatius Bonar, 1856)
‘Take Thou my cup, and it with joy or sorrow fill;
As ever best to Thee may seem, choose Thou my good and ill.’


Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 5), ed. Terence Peter Crosby, (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2010), 16.