Abraham staggered not at the promise. " He trusted in God, who quickeneth the dead. In this aspect of his service-in a scene much higher than that of Moses forsaking the court of Pharaoh-he becomes our pattern. It is ours to let God choose our service, though it might be to leave a sphere of public usefulness, where we hoped to win souls to Christ, to go to a sick bed or to a prison. We are at best bet poor judges of what will most glorify God and serve our generation. He knows; and therefore we may well give up our wishes and our hopes for the accomplishment of His blessed will. May He give all His servants grace to do this!
Let our souls learn that to obey God is to renounce ourselves-to give up our own will, that we may do His. Let us not calculate that we shall be always able to expound or harmonize His ways. Verily " He is a God that hideth Himself." Nothing but faith, implicit faith, can carry us through the path of trial. When He tries faith, He often confounds reason. He asks us to walk through the sea, to eat bread from the clouds, or to drink water from the rock of flint. " We must learn," as one has said, " to trust Him where we cannot trace Him." He sent Elijah to the brook, and the brook dried up; then to be sustained by a widow, who had only a meal to eat, and die. He gave a son to the Shunammite, and afterward took him away. But even to reason, in due time He made it all plain. He would have faith, first of all, to hold her empire unwaveringly; and then it often happens that reason gets the exposition, that patience may work experience, and experience hope.
Keeping the testimony, and not keeping things together, is the proper work of those who would now be found in God's path, and advancing. That which has wrought so much confusion and scattering is, that people have been more concerned to keep things together than to keep the testimony.
" Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." " Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."