Let them take heart. Do you feel that you have
lost your way in life? Then God himself will
show you your way. Are you utterly helpless,
worn out, body and soul? Then God’s eternal
love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive
you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors?
Then God’s eternal light is ready to show you
your way; God’s eternal peace ready to give you
peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and
faults? Then take heart; for God’s unchangeable
will is, to take away those sins and purge you from
those faults.
Are you tormented as Job was, over and above all your
sorrows, by mistaken kindness, and comforters in whom
is no comfort; who break the bruised reed and quench
the smoking flax; who tell you that you must be wicked,
and God must be angry with you, or all this would not
have come upon you? Job’s comforters did
so, and spoke very righteous-sounding words, and took
great pains to justify God and to break poor Job’s
heart, and made him say many wild and foolish words
in answer, for which he was sorry afterwards; but after
all, the Lord’s answer was, ’My wrath
is kindled against you three, for you have not spoken
of me the thing which was right, as my servant Job
hath. Therefore my servant Job shall pray for
you, for him will I accept;’ as he will accept
every humble and contrite soul who clings, amid all
its doubts, and fears, and sorrows, to the faith that
God is just and not unjust, merciful and not cruel,
condescending and not proud—that his will
is a good will, and not a bad will—that
he hateth nothing that he hath made, and willeth the
death of no man; and in that faith casts itself down
like Job, in dust and ashes before the majesty of
God, content not to understand his ways and its own
sorrows; but simply submitting itself and resigning
itself to the good will of that God who so loved the
world that he spared not his only begotten Son, but
freely gave him for us.
Footnotes:
{75} Compare Rom. iii. 23 with I Cor. xi. 7.
Let me entreat all young students to consider carefully
and honestly the radical meaning of the words [Greek
text] and [Greek text]. It will explain to them
many seemingly dark passages of St. Paul, and perhaps
deliver them from more than one really dark superstition.
{151} I do not quote the Crishna Legends, because
they seem to be of post-Christian date; and also worthless
from the notion of a real human babe being utterly
lost in the ascription to Crishna of unlimited magical
powers.
{162} See, as a counterpart to every detail of Joel’s,
the admirable description of locust-swarms in Kohl’s
Russia.
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Copyrights
The Good News of God from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
