men of the most opposite creeds
and aims--whether it be Moses or Socrates, Isaiah or Epictetus, Augustine
or Mohammed, Dante or Bernard, Shakespeare or Bacon--each and all of them
have this one fact in common--that once in their lives, at least, they
have gone down into the bottomless pit, and there out of the utter
darkness have asked the question of all questions--"Is there a God? and
if there be, what is He doing with me?" What refuge then--when a man
feels himself powerless in the gripe of some unseen and inevitable power,
and knows not whether it be chance or necessity, or a devouring fiend--to
wrap himself sternly in himself and cry, "I will endure though all the
universe be against me"? How fine it sounds! But who has done it? No,
there is but one escape, one chink through which we may see light, one
rock on which our feet may find standing-place, even in the abyss; and
that is the belief, intuitive, inspired, due neither to reasoning nor to
study, that the billows are God's billows; and that though we go down
into Hell, He is there also; the belief that not we, but He, is educating
us; that these seemingly incoherent miseries, storm following earthquake,
and earthquake fire, as if the caprice of all the demons were let loose
against us, have in His mind a spiritual coherence, an organic unity and
purpose, though we see it not; that these sorrows do not come singly,
only because He is making short work with our spirits; and because the
more effect He sees produced by one blow, the more swiftly He follows it
up by another; till in one great and varied crisis, seemingly long to us,
but short compared with immortality, our spirits may be--

"Heated hot with burning fears,
And bathed in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the strokes of doom,
To shape and use."

_Two Years Ago_.

There is no darker temptation than that which comes over a man when the
devil whispers to him such thoughts as these, "God does not care for
me--God hates me. Luck, and everything else is against me. There seems
some curse upon me. Why should I change? Let God first change to me and
then will I change towards Him. But God will not change; He has
determined to have no mercy on me. I can see that; for everything goes
wrong with me. Then what is the use of my repenting. I will go my own
way--and what must be must." Have you ever had such thoughts? Then hear
the word of the Lord to you: "When, whensoever, where