Читать книгу Quaker Strongholds онлайн

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In the strength of the Spirit of Christ, the everlasting Son of the Father, we can rise to this victory of trust; we can meet life without flinching, and read its darkest riddles in the light of the revelation of Divine love which He has won for us by His own suffering and death. Seen in that light, it is, according to the universal testimony of the saints, a gentle, though often most severe, unfolding of depth within depth of heavenly wisdom—gentle beyond words in its methods, yet inexorable in its conditions. At every step the fiery baptism must be encountered. The deep things of God cannot be reached except through the very destruction of the perishing flesh. It is through death that we enter into life. But as we do enter into it, we can truly look back and say that His ordering has been better than our planning—that His thoughts are high above our thoughts, as the heaven is above the earth.

Our goal must be a heavenly one if we are to judge truly of His guidance. The home to which, if we trust Him, He will assuredly lead us, is no earthly home; but Zion—the heavenly Jerusalem; the beautiful city of peace, which can be entered only through much tribulation. Those who are looking for smooth roads and luxurious resting-places, may well say they perceive no sign of guidance at all. The Divine guidance is away from self-indulgence, often away from outward success; through humiliation and failure, and many snares and temptations; over rough roads and against opposing forces—always uphill. Its evidence of success is in the inmost, deepest, most spiritual part of our existence. It is idle indeed to talk of it to those whose faces are not set Zion-wards. It will bring them none of the results in which they have their reward. Those who know the voice of the Divine Guide, and those who deny that it can be heard, are not so much contradicting each other as speaking different languages—or rather speaking in reference to different states of existence.