[X] Haselquist’s Voyage.
THE SECURITY OF GOD’S PEOPLE:
A Sermon,
By the Venerable C. J. Hoare, M.A.,
Archdeacon and Prebendary of Winchester.
Romans viii. 28.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”
Amongst the observations most frequently heard in the world, is that made on the undeserved prosperity of the wicked, and the many seemingly uncalled-for trials of the righteous. Experience will indeed tell us, that neither of these opposite conditions is uninterrupted; neither is it all sunshine in the most prosperous worldly lot; nor is it all gloom—far from it—in the Christian’s portion on earth. Experience will also go further, and will abundantly prove the saying of the wise man, that “the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.” Such success has a tendency first to deceive, then to corrupt, and lastly to betray men into utter destruction. But the text will lead us still further; it will teach us, that the trials of the righteous preserve them—yea, work for good; and that “all things,” and, therefore, even the greatest trials, “work together for good to them that love God.”
The text represents them as workmen. They work together for good; they are constantly at work for that purpose, whether as instruments in God’s hands, or as in a degree self-moving for that end; they are constructing as it were a building, or they are laying a foundation; and that which they lay—that which all things befalling a Christian are ever laying for him—is a ground for his substantial, necessary, and eternal benefit. “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”
This, then, it will be, with God’s blessing, my humble endeavour to show in the following discourse: first, premising the sense of the word “good,” in all just and reasonable acceptation; next, showing more fully how all things may be thus said to “work for good to them that love God;” finally, pointing out some of the many things which will be found by experience to work in this very manner.