When a man behaves treacherously it is a terrible thing.
For only think to what all that has brought them. Some became traitors; too spiritless to help their own people, they were courageous enough to take up arms to help the English; on all those rests the guilt of their brothers’ blood. The result was to render those who held on still more steadfast and to teach them still greater abhorrence of treachery and of bad faith.
As they had struggled and suffered for so long, and it had not pleased God to deliver them into the hand of their enemy, they did not wish to be themselves the ones to do it. And I was entirely at one with them, for their story and mine were one and the same. It still remains inexplicable to me how for seventeen months I had been able to fly with my children, many a day not knowing what to do.
It is often hard and difficult to “trek” round with so many children and not to be able to get clothes and other necessaries for them. And yet I was able to say every day, “The Lord has helped me and strengthened me, like He helped the widow of Zarephath, so that her cruse never failed her, but always remained full.” Often as I lay in bed at night, feeling so depressed by the thought of what would come of it all, did I repeat Hymn 22, “Rest, my soul, thy God is King,” and the last verse, “Your God is King, be contented with your lot.”
And every day the Lord strengthened me in this manner, so that I had no right to be faithless. And it was the same with our people.
They went on with their meetings, and every time they decided to persevere and not give up. Everywhere it was the same.
I thought, “Who is it that makes the burghers so strong? It is beyond man’s comprehension.”
Yet if one remembers the place of Golgotha, then one can better understand.
That the Saviour must suffer so much, and yet be innocent, was a difficult thing for His disciples to understand at the time. It was known throughout the world that the Saviour must die, and undergo the most cruel treatment, but men could not tell why it should be.
And we do not know why this people should suffer so bitterly; some day we shall learn the reason.