Happiness and the Divine Order

Happiness can be found only in being resigned and contented in the Divine Order. That is to say, in being resigned and contented in that situation, whatever it may be, in which God's providential order has evidently placed us. If the angels in heaven, like men under the influence of the natural life, were constantly desiring to change their position, and to assume the place of archangels or other higher beings, they would exhibit a spirit, which would be displeasing to God, and which could not fail to render them unhappy.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXLVIII.

Our Choice or God's?

It  is a sign that our wills are not wholly lost in the will of God, when we are much in the habit of using words which imply election or choice; such as, I want this, or I want that; I hope it will be so and so, or I hope it will be otherwise. When our wills are lost in the will of God, all our specific choices and preferences are merged in God's preference and choice. The soul truly loves the arrangements of God, whatever they may be. In regard to whatever is now, and whatever shall be hereafter, its language is, "Thy will be done."

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXV.

The Prisoners of God

Along the streets of the city of Bedford, in England, the poor and illiterate preacher, John Bunyan, is conducted to prison. Years roll on; to human appearance all his earthly prospects are cut off; he has no books with the single exception of the Bible and the Lives of the Martyrs. Had he not been imprisoned, he would have lived and died, as do many other men, known perhaps, and useful, within the limits of a single town, and for a single generation. But, shut up in prison, and cut off from worldly plans, God was enabled to work in him, in his own wonderful way, and to guide his mind to other and higher issues. It was there he wrote that remarkable work, the Pilgrim’s Progress. Had his enemies not been allowed to prevail against him, it probably would not have been written. It was thus that God turned that which was designed for evil into good. It was a wisdom higher than man's wisdom, which shut up the pilgrim himself in prison. The Pilgrim's Progress, which was the result of the imprisonment of the pilgrim whose progress it describes, free as the winds of heaven, goes from house to house, knocks at every heart, teaches all classes, visits all nations.

How God Led the Bible Characters

The Bible is full of instances and illustrations of the subject [of divine providence]. The patriarch Moses, in particular, furnishes us a lesson in relation to it. Such were the arrangements of God's providence, that he found it necessary to quit the aspiring hopes which he had once entertained of being the immediate deliverer of his people, and to flee from the splendid court of Pharaoh into the deserts of Arabia Petræa. For forty years he tended his flocks in the vicinity of Mount Sinai, exchanging the palaces of Egypt for a rude home in the distant and solitary rocks. Undoubtedly it seemed very mysterious to Moses that he should thus be dealt with. He did not then understand that God, in thus leading him into the wilderness, and making him acquainted with the vast desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, was preparing him for the dangerous task of being a leader of his people through these very deserts and mountains.

But this was not all. His manners and intellect had been trained in the court of the Pharaohs; but God, who is a greater teacher than kings, saw it necessary that his spirit should be disciplined and trained in the wilderness. It was there that he learned, more fully than he had ever understood it before, the lesson of a present and special Providence. Taken from the bulrushes and placed in a palace, and then taken from a palace and placed for forty years in a lonely desert, he felt deeply that God selects and arranges the habitations of men; and that it is man's great business, submitting on religious principles to the arrangements of Providence, to harmonize his inward state with his outward situation.

And, besides that, he wanted all this time and all this solitariness of place, in order to break up his early and unfavorable associations, to chasten and subdue his natural pride, and to imbibe that wise and gentle quietude of spirit which is one of the surest signs of a soul that dwells with God.

It was in the prisons of Egypt that Joseph received that discipline which fitted him to be the great Egyptian ruler. It was when he was tending his father's flocks in Bethlehem, or when he was driven into mountains and caverns, that the hand and soul of David were trained and strengthened to the great task of holding a nation's scepter. Daniel was taught of God in the lion's den; and Paul was aided in learning the great lesson of entire dependence, when he could find no escape from persecution, and perhaps from death, but by being let down by a basket over the wall of Damascus.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 5.

Diverse Allotments in Life

We have seen that the allotments of men in the present life, like things in external and material nature, are exceedingly diversified. And it must be admitted that, to human view, these diversities are oftentimes mysterious.  It is not easy for men to see, certainly not in all cases — the wisdom of that arrangement which makes one poor, and another rich; which confines one to a particular spot, but enlarges and diversifies the habitation of another; which places one on a throne, another in a dungeon. It should not be forgotten, however, that it is God who does it all; and, to the eye of faith, everything which he does is full of wisdom and goodness, however it may appear to those who see only with human wisdom.

In one of the retired streets of yonder city there lives an honest and laborious mechanic. His daily walk is limited by the few rods which separate his house from his workshop. Arrived at his place of labor in the morning, he toils from morning till night within the limited space of a few feet in circumference. From day to day, and from year to year, the muscles of his arm are lifted at the same anvil, or are turning at the same wheel. An unseen hand, which is acquainted with all localities, has drawn the lines around him, and planted him there for life. He is a prisoner, if we may so express it, in the Lord's captivity. But it would be a sad mistake, if he should suppose that this providential arrangement is instituted without wisdom and without goodness. Though he will probably never wander beyond those narrow boundaries, yet that place, of all the places in the universe, is the best one for him. We do not say it appears best to human wisdom, which is incapable of judging, but is best in the view of Him who has assigned it. Happy will it be for him if he does not doubt. Believing that He who has given him life has constituted his habitation, !et it be his aim to harmonize his feelings with his position, and thus the principle of faith, whatever view the world may take of him, will make him a happy child in his Father's house.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 5.

Moral Harmony With God's Providence

Things animate and things inanimate, things in space and things in time, things said and things done, all being and all action, in themselves and in their relations, in their rights and in their influences, form a part of the great system of the facts and arrangements of divine Providence. Man, and all the acts and all the sufferings of which he is the source and the subject, is placed in the midst of this great ocean; this great and moving flux and reflux of other men, and other acts, and other sufferings, and is required to be in moral harmony with it. It is this requisition, this rule, existing under these circumstances, which constitutes the providential law, —  a law operating from the external upon the internal; a law founded in infinite wisdom, just and inflexible in its requirements, just and inflexible in its retributions.

The law of Providence coincides with the law of the Scriptures. God, who speaks in Providence as well as in the Scriptures, cannot utter voices which, in their principles and claims, are discordant with each other. We may sometimes fail in our interpretations of the Scriptures; we may sometimes attach a meaning to them different from God's meaning; but when the declaration of God in the Scriptures is rightly understood, it will always be found to harmonize with his providential voice. If, for instance, he requires us, in his written law, to love our neighbor as ourselves, he has also arranged in such a manner the things and relations which constitute his providential law as to make the same requisition. And it will be found true, under the operation of the divine Providence, that man will and must suffer just in proportion as he comes short of that divine law of love. It will be the same in other similar instances.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 6, Chapter 2.

The Law of Providence

We cannot well understand and appreciate the doctrine of the law of Providence without some proper view of the mutual relationship and connection of things. It was a maxim of the Schoolmen, and is not less a maxim of nature, NIHIL EX NIHILO FIT. Everything, therefore, which exists, if it do not have an existence which is eternal and independent, must come from a common source. Consequently, there must be some common relationships, some common alliances.

And this is just as true of events which exist in time as of things which exist in place. It is true of everything of which it can be said, it is. If God calls into existence, or, in any way, gives rise to certain things and events and establishes them in their order, which, as a "God of order," he cannot fail to do, he necessarily gives to them their position, their relations, their rights, their influences. All these are theirs by the nature of the case. They do not make them of themselves, but have them, as it were, by inheritance. It is not easy to see how it can be otherwise. It is a matter of necessity, although we may properly make a distinction between things and events in some respects, that they should have their place and relations, their appropriate rights, their appropriate effects.