er to the world the living
proof that the triumph of good is possible to him whose power is the
faithful God.

And once more: Because He is faithful who has promised, we may safely
leave the issues of our life in His keeping. If by the help of God we
are trying to do the will of God, nothing else really matters. The
crooked places of to-day will be made straight to-morrow. After all,
it is not more knowledge we need, but more power to use the knowledge
we have. Much of our unrest only means that we want to know more than
the silent God sees fit to tell us. We know enough for the wise
ordering of life; and the highest, holiest thing any of us can do, is
to do the wisest and best we know, in whatever honest sphere
circumstances have placed us. The riddles of the universe, and the
perplexities and heartache which come out of our attempts to reconcile
much that we know and see with the rule of an Almighty, an all-wise and
faithful God--these will be here long after we are gone. We must just
take the Master at His word when He says: "What I do thou knowest not
now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

"We cannot," says a wise teacher, "take up a drop of water, and find in
that drop the flow of the tides, and the soft and then loud music of
calm and storm. To see the ocean we must grasp it in all its rocky
bed, bordered by continents." So before the very present troubles of
life, we cannot see all the government of the faithful God. It has
boundaries wider than these. Human life is but a fraction of the sum
of life. The tides of the mind, the music and the tumult of human
waters, cannot be heard and felt in this drop of existence.

We may believe that the moral government of the world is in the hands
of Him whose love and law are both the same; and we may, at the same
time, have to recognize the fact, that so many suffer grievously from
forces they have not called into being, and which they are almost
helpless to control. We may have to reconcile as best we can, a
general Providence, with much apparent severity in its particular
operation. Unless this be understood, some parts of this address will
appear inconsistent with each other. I leave this order of
suffering--not its causes--with the responsibility of God; and, for
myself, I am persuaded that our last word about it will be one of
praise, and not of reproach--

"Right for a while may yield to wrong,
And virtue be baffled by crime,
But the help o