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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 indifferent 
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 sufferings, even of the humblest of His creatures. Proud, 
indeed ! in our inmost confidence that in all His ways towards 
us 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 ? 
