Believer, be still! The dealings of thy Heavenly Father may seem dark to thee; there may seem now to be no golden fringe, no "bright light in the clouds;" but a day of disclosures is at hand. "Take it on trust a little while." An earthly child takes _on trust_ what his father tells him: when he reaches maturity, much that was baffling to his infant comprehension is explained. Thou art in this world in the nonage of thy being--Eternity is the soul's immortal manhood. _There_, every dealing will be vindicated. It will lose all its "darkness" when bathed in the floods "of the excellent glory!"
Ah! instead of thus being as weaned children, how apt are we to exercise ourselves in matters too high for us? not content with knowing that our Father _wills_ it, but presumptuously seeking to know _how_ it is, and _why_ it is. If it be unfair to pronounce on the unfinished and incompleted works of man; if the painter, or sculptor, or artificer, would shrink from having his labours judged of when in a rough, unpolished, immatured state; how much more so with the works of God? How we should honour Him by a simple, confiding, unreserved submission to His will,--contented patiently to wait the fulfilment of this "_hereafter_" promise, when all the lights and shadows in the now half-finished picture will be blended and melted into one harmonious whole,--when all the now disjointed stones in the temple will be seen to fit into their appointed place, giving unity, and compactness, and symmetry, to all the building.
And who is it that speaks these living "words," "What _I_ do?" It is He who died for us? who now lives for us! Blessed Jesus! Thou mayest _do_ much that our blind hearts would like _un_done,--"terrible things in righteousness which we looked not for." The heaviest (what we may be tempted to call the severest) cross Thou canst lay upon us we shall regard as only the _apparent_ severity of unutterable and unalterable love. Eternity will unfold how _all_, _all_ was needed; that nothing else, nothing less, could have done! If not now, at least then, the deliberate verdict on a calm retrospect of life will be this,--
"_THE WORD_ OF THE LORD IS RIGHT, AND ALL HIS WORKS ARE DONE IN TRUTH."
