s. Let us only _trust God_, and we need not fear
anything, but welcome everything!

Let us consider this; and, first of all, understand what is meant by
trusting God.

To trust God, remember, is to trust _Himself_--a living, personal God.
It is not to trust to any means whatever whereby He makes Himself
known; but to look through them, all, or to go by them all, to the
living God himself. This is more than trusting to any truth even
revealed in the Bible, for it is trusting the Person who spoke the
truth, or of whom the truth is spoken.

To trust God is to trust Him as He is revealed in all the fulness of
His glorious character. It is to trust Him as true, and therefore as
faithful in keeping every promise, and in fulfilling every threat; as
wise, and therefore as never erring in any arrangement made for the
well-being of His creatures; as righteous, and therefore as doing
right to each and all; as holy, and therefore as hating evil, and
loving good; as merciful and therefore as pardoning the guilty
through a Redeemer;--it is, in one word, to trust Him "whose name is
Love!"--love which shines in every attribute, and is the security for
every blessing! Trust and obedience are therefore, from their nature,
inseparable.

This trust in God is not common. Nothing, indeed, so common in men's
mouths as the phrases, "I trust in God," "I have all my dependence on
God," "We have none else to look to but Him," and the like. But, alas!
how meaningless often to men's hearts are those sayings in men's
mouths! They frequently express confidence only in God's doing what He
has never promised to do;--as when a slothful, idle, dissipated man
continues in his wickedness, yet "trusts God" will ward off poverty
from him, or provide for his family whom he is all the while robbing.
Or the words express confidence in what God has positively declared He
never will nor can do;--as when an impenitent man, who has no faith
in Christ or love to Him, "trusts God will forgive him," or make him
happy, or not punish him, should he die as he is. All this, and such
like trust, is "vain confidence," trusting a lie, and believing a
delusion. Others, again, professing to trust God's word, manifest a
total want of trust in His ways, and do not walk in His commandments,
nor submit to His corrections, believing neither to be the will of a
holy and loving Father. And thus, men who in theory _say_ they trust
God, practically have no trust in Him, whatever t