Prayer

It is very remarkable that this world has always hated the good and loved the evil; but it has always been so. The world and the Church are perpetual and eternal enemies. Darkness and light continually are opposed to one another. If we look down the list of God’s servants from the first, we find it as an invariable rule that the world has ever hated them in their generation. Men cast them out of whom the world was not worthy. Still, they all maintained their faith in God; each could say with the Psalmist, to the close of his life, “In the Lord put I my trust.” And God has never forsaken them that trust in Him. Sorrows may fall thick around them at times, trials grievous to be borne, and divers temptations may come upon them; but all these things tend only to strengthen faith in them that are saved. If a man enjoys all good things on earth--great prosperity, continual ease, nothing to vex him--then it needs, we know not what an amount of grace, and what years of careful training in himself, and of prayer and watchfulness, to keep that man from falling away. There are so few of us who would really love and serve God if we met with no trials in life, that in His great mercy God sends these things, first upon one, and then upon another amongst us. It is out of love to us He does so. No less true is this principle of faith, and trust, and security as applied to a nation, as it is to a church, or to each individual Christian among us. It is the secret of all national security, and prosperity, and peace. (W. J. Stracey, M. A.)  

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