Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/218

 alekites, and Moabites, against which he has to contend. This is a warfare in which we must all engage. Truth must oppose error, and it must aim at the destruction of evil. How are our pride, our revenge, our malice, and all our uncharitable feelings to be subdued, if the truth reveal not their hideous deformity, and contend against them? Good and evil cannot dwell in peace and amity; evil will not permit good to reign unmolested, and good cannot but hate the thing that is evil. Truth, therefore, must decide between them; and truth wars against evil, and will continue so to war, until evil is dislodged from the will, and destroyed. Truth, then, is the sword and the spear in this instance. But when truth has accomplished its object, has freed the will of its dangerous tenants, and introduced and united goodness with itself, the weapons of war are no longer needed; the man having passed through the purifying process, and become regenerate, acquired in a degree the celestial state, and then his sword is beaten into a plowshare, and his spear into a pruning-hook, and he needs not learn war any more.

HE belief in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, as the Almighty Creator of the universe,