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Father's most devoted care and tenderness? Why should we 

 doubt the merciful intention with which all Divine acts are 

 guided, even those which confound our intelligence, and break 

 our hearts ? What affliction is there whose darkness the cross 

 cannot illumine, and whose bitterness it cannot soften? So 

 reasons the Christian, and remember that what I have said of 

 nations applies as strongly, though perhaps still less visibly, to 

 individuals. We only believe firmly in Providence, when we 

 accept the cross. 



Apart from the faith of Jesus Christ, you may meet with 

 bursts of sincere piety, a touching submission to the will of God, 

 a trust more or less in His love ; but when you see a man who 

 believes firmly in the intervention of God in his life, a man who 

 declares that all his grief has divine education for its end, a 

 man who can give thanks amid severe affliction, you will never 

 be mistaken in calling that man a Christian. But here the 

 spirit of doubt I am dealing with takes a new form, and wields 

 another weapon. We are told it is a wild delusion to suppose 

 the Church can be the centre of all the Divine plans, and that 

 humanity can have ever been the object of such a miracle of 

 love as the Incarnation. Christians who believe the heavens 

 were shaken to effect their salvation, and that all things work 

 together to realize their hopes, the glory of their God, are 

 accused of pride. Why ! what pride can there be in believing 

 God in placing us on the earth had an evident object, that 

 object being His service? What pride can there be in believing 

 the free obedience of one loving heart is more acceptable to 

 God than the enforced submission of all creatures who serve 

 Him through necessity ? What pride in believing that in order 

 to obtain this obedience His love recoiled at nothing, not even 

 the most unheard-of humiliation, not even before the sacrifice 

 of the cross ? Thus we are called proud when we wish to make 

 our life depend immediately on Him from whom we have received 

 all, when we trust the voice of conscience on Divine holiness. 

 We are accused of pride when we believe nothing is indifi'erent 

 to God in our life, and that He is grieved and hurt by our selfish- 

 ness and sin. We are called proud when we think that His 

 mercy exceeds His justice, and when we suppose it great enough 

 to reach even to the gift of Himself. Proud when we believe 

 that His Father-like tenderness is vast enough to comprehend 

 all in its wide embrace, and to know, and count the sorrows, 

 and suff'erings, even of the humblest of His creatures. Proud, 

 indeed ! in our inmost confidence that in all His ways towards 

 ns nothing is chance, all is love. Proud ! but those who re- 

 proach us with pride, have they ever seen how much is covered 

 by their pretended humility ? 



