But if we will not have
his way, He will not let us have our own way--not at first, at least.
He will bring our plans to nothing, and let us make fools of
ourselves, and bring in sudden accidents of which we never dreamed,
just to show us that we are not our own masters, and cannot cut out
our own roads through life. And if we take His lesson, and go to Him
to teach and strengthen us--well: and if not--then perhaps--which is
the most awful misery which can happen to any man in earth--God may
give up teaching us during this life, and let us have our own way,
and be filled with the fruit of our own devices; from which worst of
punishments may He in His mercy, save you, and me, and all belonging
to us, in this life and in the life to come.
But some of you may say: "We understand the first half of the text
very well, and like it very well; we all think it just that those who
set themselves up should have a fall, and we are very glad to see
them have a fall: but we do not see why he who abases himself should
have any right to be exalted." Ah, my friends, it is much easier,
and needs much less knowledge of God, and much less of the likeness
of Christ, to see what is wrong, than to see what is right. Every
man knows when a bone is broken, but it is not every one who can set
it again.
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