The man of faith, subordinating all his
desires of personal good to that standard which God has established, is
willing and desirous to trust all his happiness, whether it relate to
the present or the future, with that great and good Being, who never
does otherwise than right. He may be a wanderer from his country with
Abraham, he may be sold into exile with the young but believing Joseph,
he may undergo all the deprivations and sorrows of Job, of Jeremiah, and
of Daniel, and yet find a consolation and support in faith, which is as
wonderful as on any natural principles it is inexplicable.
He,
who has truly resigned or abandoned himself to God in the exercise of
faith, will remain calm, peaceful, and thankful, under interior as well
as exterior desolation. The common forms of Christianity will, in
general, be found capable of supporting what may be called outward
desolation, such as the loss of property, reputation, health, and
friends. But a state of interior desolation, in which we have no
sensible joys, no inward illuminations, but on the contrary are sterile
alike of edifying thoughts and quickening emotions, and are beset
continually with heavy temptations, (a state to which the people of God
are for wise reasons sometimes subjected,) is, generally speaking, far
more trying. In this state, as well as in that of exterior trials, the
mind that has abandoned all into the hands of God, will wait, in humble
and holy quietness, for the divine salvation. Faith remains; a firm,
realizing, unchangeable faith. And the language of the heart is, under
the keen anguish which it is permitted to experience, “though he slay
me, yet will I trust in him.”
— edited from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 5.
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