I hope, I
yearn to see that it all comes from some great and perfect will, a
will with qualities of which what we know as mercy, justice, and
love are but faint shadows--but that is hidden from me. We cannot
escape, we must bear what God lays upon us. We may fling ourselves
into bitter and dark rebellion; still He spares us or strikes us,
gives us sorrow or delight. My one hope is to cooperate with Him,
to accept the chastening joyfully and courageously. Then He takes
from me joy, and courage alike, till I know not whom I serve, a
Father or a tyrant. Can it indeed help us to doubt whether He be
tyrant or no? Again I know not, and again I sicken in fruitless
despair, like one caught in a great labyrinth of crags and
precipices.
February 14, 1891.
Then the Christian teacher says: "God has given you a will, an
independent will to act and choose; put it in unison with His
will." Alas, I know not how much of my seeming liberty is His or
mine. He seems to make me able to exert my will in some directions,
able to make it effective; and yet in other matters, even though I
see that a course is holy and beautiful, I have no power to follow
it at all. I see men some more, some less hampered than myself.
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