388 RELIGIOUS WORK 



in its attitude towards God. This is a reality as available, poten- 

 tially, for the most poverty-stricken pariah in India, as it is for the 

 most favored denizen of the civilized world. As this is a potential 

 value, however, the heathen yet needs to be made aware that he 

 is to cooperate with it to gain the blessing. 



This doctrine of providence is grounded in two things; first, 

 in the nature of the divine love which ever outreaches to impart 

 to man God's own type of blessedness and God's plan for his life 

 unfolding; and, second, in the fact that he who is en rapport with 

 such a God need expect nothing inharmonious with his ultimate 

 and highest welfare to occur to him. No other system than 

 Christianity has such a doctrine; it cannot have, because no other 

 system has such a conception of deity, nor such a conception of 

 harmony with the deity. Doubtless such a doctrine of providence, 

 even by most Christians, is but feebly believed; human nature 

 resists it in its practical bearings. Probably more unrest and 

 mental misery arise from distrust of and rebellion against God 

 concerning untoward events in life, than from any other single 

 cause. And yet this Christian doctrine stands elemental in the 

 system of Christian truth. 



Christianity puts no embargo on a man's bettering his material 

 conditions, if he justly can; it encourages to this. Whenever, 

 however, the circumstances of life impose limitations, sorrows, or 

 affliction beyond man's power to remove, they are to be regarded 

 as divinely imposed or permitted for divine though hidden reasons, 

 and when trustfully submitted to, from that moment they become 

 providential in their bearings and purpose, and have an entirely 

 transformed value. There is, of course, a sovereign element in 

 appointing to men their conditions. The Christian thing, then, 

 to do when events are plainly beyond one's power of control, is 

 devoutly to accept them, however trying and however mysterious. 

 No Christian can be said to have passed beyond the infantile stage 

 of Christian experience who has not learned that the richest bless- 

 ings in the grace of Christ come through the school of trial. The 

 exact form of outward circumstance in itself considered then, 

 would seem to have little or nothing to do with the measure of 

 the real satisfaction with life. Said the Apostle Paul: " I have 

 learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content." The 

 reason of this was that he was confident that through the very 

 pressure of the events of life, and under the guidance of that Spirit, 

 which is also immanent within the wheels of all circumstance, he 

 was finding his way into God's eternal plan for him. 



Every man's life in its last analysis is a plan of God. By him 

 the end is seen from the beginning ; every disappointment is 

 anticipated, every sorrow provided for, every hair of one's head 



