"Can't you trust the Lord?" he said.
"I see trouble before me, whatever I do," I said with some difficulty.
"Very well," he said; "even so, trust the Lord. The trouble will do you no harm."
I sat down for a moment and covered my face. It might do me no harm; it might at the same time separate me from what I loved best in the world.
"Cannot you trust?" he repeated. " 'He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat.' "
"You know," I said, getting up, "one cannot help being weak."
"Will you excuse me? - That is precisely what we can help. We cannot help being ignorant sometimes, - foolish sometimes, - short-sighted. But weak we need not be; for 'in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength;' and 'he giveth power to the faint.' "
"But there is no perfection, Mr. Dinwiddie."
"Not if by perfection you mean, standing alone. But if the power that holds us up is perfect, - what should hinder our having a fulness of that? 'If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.' Isn't that promise good for all we want to ask?"
I sat down again to think. Mr. Dinwiddie quietly took his place by my side; and we were still for a good while. The plains of Jericho and the Jordan and the Moab mountains and the Quarantania, all seemed to have new voices for me now; voices full of balm; messages of soft-healing. I do think the messages God sends to us by natural things are some of the sweetest and mightiest and best understood of all. They come home.