Help for the Downcast

William Bridge (1600 - 1670) was a puritan pastor in Britain. He preached a series of sermons in 1648 on dealing with depression, discouragement of the soul and suffering. One of my favorites in the collection is called "The Cure of Discouragement by Faith in Jesus Christ." The purpose of this sermon is to instruct the believer that faith in Christ is the only help in times of discouragement and that the downtrodden soul must rely on God in Christ for some good thing that is out of sight.

Bridge says,

"Faith gives a man the true prospect of things, past, present and to come, and of things as they are. All our fears and discouragements arise from this, that men do not see things as they are. If evil be stirring, they think it is greater than it is. If good be stirring, they think it is less than it is. If a man be in temptation, then he loses site of his former experiences, and so he is discouraged. If a man be under desertion, he loses sight of what is present, of what God is to him and of what he is to God; and so he is discouraged. If a man be under affliction, he loses the sight of the end and the issue of the affliction, and so he is disquieted. But now when faith comes, it opens a man's eyes to see things that are invisible, it is the evidence of things not seen."

And one of my favorite quotes,

"So take an affliction in itself, and it is salt and brackish; but drawn up by divine love, then it is sweet; and if a soul can but taste the love of God in it, and see what a loving end the Lord will make, he will then find it is very sweet, and say, I would not have been without this affliction."