Never let us get into the common trick of calling unbelief Resignation; of asking, and then because we have not faith to believe, putting in a “Thy will be done” at the end. Let us make God’s will our will, and so say, “Thy will be done.” There is a false as well as a true and holy resignation. When the sorrow is come or coming, or necessary apparently for others’ good, let us say with our Master in the Agony, “Not what we will, but what Thou wilt!” But up to that point, let us pray boldly.

Letters and Memories of Charles Kingsley.

Christianity heightens as well as deepens the human as well as the divine affections. I am happy; for the less hope, the more faith. God knows what is best for us. I am sure we do not. Continual resignation, I begin to find, is the secret of continual strength. “Daily dying,” as Bœhmen interprets it, “is the path of daily living.”

Letters and Memories.

In all the trials of life, there is still some way of escape to be found if a man goes to the right place to look for it; and, if not of escape, still of compensation. I speak of that which I know. Of my own comfort I will not speak—of the path by which I attained it I will. It was simply by not struggling, doing my work vigorously where God had put me, and believing firmly that His promises had a real, not a mere metaphorical meaning, and that Psalms x., xxvii., xxxiv., xxxvii., cvii., cxii., cxxiii., cxxvi., cxlvi., are as practically true for us as they were for the Jews of old, and that it is the faithlessness of this day which prevents men from accepting God’s promises in their literal sense with simple childlike faith.

Letters and Memories.

Do not fear the clouds and storm and rain; look at the bow in the cloud, in the very rain itself. That is a sign that the sun, though you cannot see it, is shining still—that up above, beyond the cloud, is still sunlight and warmth and cloudless blue sky. Believe in God’s covenant. Believe that the sun will conquer the clouds, warmth will conquer cold, calm will conquer storm, fair will conquer foul, light will conquer darkness, joy will conquer sorrow, life conquer death, love conquer destruction and the devouring floods; because God is light, God is love, God is life, God is peace and joy eternal, God is without change, and labours to give life and joy and peace to man and beast and all created things. This was the meaning of the rainbow. It is a witness that God, who made the world, is the friend and preserver of man; that His promises are like the everlasting sunshine which is above the clouds, without spot or fading, without variableness or shadow of turning.

National Sermons.

If I did not believe in a special Providence, in a perpetual education of men by evil as well as good, by small things as well as great—if I did not believe that—I could believe nothing.

Letters and Memories.

Let us be content; we do not know what is good for us, and God does.

It is true, and you will find it true (though God knows it is a difficult lesson enough to learn) that there should be no greater comfort to Christian people than to be made like Christ by suffering patiently not only the hard work of every-day life, but sorrows, troubles, and sicknesses, and all our heavenly Father’s corrections, whensoever, by any manner of adversity, it shall please His gracious goodness to visit them. For Christ Himself went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain. He entered not into His glory before He was crucified. Therefore those words which we read in the Visitation of the Sick about this matter are not mere kind words, meant to give comfort for the moment. They are truth and fact and sound philosophy. They are as true for the young lad in health and spirits as for the old folks crawling towards their graves. It is true that sickness and all sorts of troubles are sent to correct and amend in us whatsoever doth offend the eye of our heavenly Father. It is true, and you will find it true, that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.

All Saints’ Day Sermons.

“That ye through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,” says St. Paul; and, again, “Let patience have her perfect work.” But where are we to get patience? God knows it is hard in such a world as this for poor creatures to be always patient. But faith can breed patience, though patience cannot breed itself; and faith in whom? Faith in our Father in Heaven, even in Almighty God Himself. He calls Himself the “God of Patience and Consolation.” Pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will make you patient; pray for His Holy Spirit, and He will console and comfort you. He has promised that Spirit of His—the Comforter—the Spirit of Love, Trust, and Patience—to as many as ask Him. Ask Him at His Holy Table to make you patient; ask Him to change your wills into the likeness of His will. Then will your eyes be opened; then will you see in the Scriptures a sure promise of hope, and glory, and redemption for yourself and all the world; then you will see in the blessed Sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood a sure sign and warrant, handed down from hand to hand, from age to age, from year to year, from father to son, that His promises shall be fulfilled—that patience shall have her perfect work—that hope shall become a reality—that not one of the Lord’s words shall fail or pass away till all be fulfilled.

National Sermons.

God means some good to you by prostrating you—perhaps He means by giving you blessings almost without your asking, to show you how little avails morbid sensitiveness or self-tormenting struggles. Synthetical minds are subject to this self-torture. Such a period in your life is the time to become again a little child! I do not mean a re-regeneration, but a permitting of the mind to assume that tone of calm wonder and infantile trust, which will allow all the innate principles within—all God-bestowed graces which have been bruised and bowed by the tempest, to blossom gently upwards again, in “the clear shining after rain”—a breathing time in life—not too much retrospection or self-examination—keep that for the healthy and vigorous hours of the mind—but a silent basking in the light of God’s presence—a time for faith, more than for labour; for general and unexpressed, more than for particular or earnest prayer.

Letters and Memories.

Sorrow, though dreary, is not barren. Nothing need be barren to those who view all things in their real light, as links in the great chain of progression, both for themselves and for the universe. To us, all Time should seem so full of life; every moment the grave and the father of unnumbered events and designs in heaven and earth, revealing the mind of our God Himself—all things moving smoothly and surely, in spite of apparent checks and disappointments, towards the appointed End!

Letters and Memories.

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