there out of the utter darkness have asked the question of all questions—“Is there a God? and if there be, what is He doing with me?” What refuge then—when a man feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power, and knows not whether it be chance or necessity, or a devouring fiend—to wrap himself sternly in himself and cry, “I will endure though all the universe be against me”? How fine it sounds! But who has done it? No, there is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light, one rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss; and that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to study, that the billows are God’s billows; and that though we go down into Hell,
He is there also; the belief that not we, but He, is educating us; that these seemingly incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake, and earthquake fire, as if the caprice of all the demons were let loose against us, have in His mind a spiritual coherence, an organic unity and purpose, though we see it not; that these sorrows do not come singly, only because He is making short work with our spirits; and because the more effect He sees produced by one blow, the more swiftly He follows it up by another; till in one great and varied crisis, seemingly long to us, but short compared with immortality, our spirits may be—
“Heated hot with burning fears,
And bathed in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the strokes of doom,
To shape and use.”
Two Years Ago.
There is no darker temptation than that which comes over a man when the devil whispers to him such thoughts as these, “God does not care for me—God hates me. Luck, and everything else is against me. There seems some curse upon me. Why should I change? Let God first change to me and then will I change towards Him. But God will not change; He has determined to have no mercy on me. I can see that; for everything goes wrong with me. Then what is the use of my repenting. I will go my own way—and what must be must.” Have you ever had such thoughts? Then hear the word of the Lord to you: “When, whensoever, wheresoever, the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness which he has committed, and
doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive. Have I any pleasure in the death of him that dieth saith the Lord, and not rather that he should be converted and live?” Never believe the devil when he tells you that God hates you. Never believe him when he tells you that God has been too hard upon you, and placed you in such circumstances of temptation, ignorance, poverty or anything else, that you cannot mend. What does the promise of your Baptism say? “Be you poor, tempted, ignorant, stupid, be you what you will, you are God’s child—your Father’s love is over you, His mercy ready for you.” You feel too weak to change. Ask God’s Spirit to give you a strength of will you never felt before. You feel too proud to
change. Ask God’s Spirit to humble your proud heart, to soften your hard heart; and you will find to your surprise that when your pride is gone, when you are utterly ashamed of yourself, and see your sins in their true blackness, and feel unworthy to look up to God, that then will come a nobler, holier, manlier feeling—self-respect, and a clear conscience, and the thought that, weak and simple as you are, you are in the right way; that God and the Angels of God are smiling on you; that you are in tune again with all earth and heaven, because you are what God wills you to be. Not His proud, peevish, self-willed child, fancying yourself strong enough to go alone, when you are really the slave of your own passions and appetites and
the playthings of the devil; but His loving, loyal son through the strength of God, and able to do what you will, because what you will God wills also.
National Sermons.
To escape atheism and despair, let us remember that the Creator and Ordainer of the circumstances of life is not chance or Nature, but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of us.