Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/109

Letter 9] "God, the Father in heaven, did not intend you to be thus miserable"—thus we can begin our message—"your sufferings come from an Enemy against whom He is contending. Do not for a moment suppose that you are to put up in this life with penury, disease, misery, and sin as if these things came from God. Very often they are the just punishments of your own faults, as when drunkenness brings disease; but as the sin, so also the punishment, was of Satan's making, though God may use both for your good. You are to be patient under tribulation; you are to be made perfect through suffering; you are to regard the trials and troubles of life as being in some sense a useful chastisement proceeding from the fatherly hand of God. But never let your sense of the need of resignation lead you to attribute to the origination of God that which Christ teaches us to have been brought into the world by God's adversary. Satan made these evils to lead men wrong; God uses them to lead men right. Death, for example, came from Satan, who would fain make us believe that our souls perish with our bodies, that friends are parted for ever by the grave, and that there is no righteousness hereafter to compensate for what is wrong here: but God uses death to make men sober, thoughtful, steadfast, courageous, and trustful. It remains with you to decide whether you will bear your evils so as to succumb to the temptations of Satan, or so as to prevail over them and utilize them to your own welfare and to the glory of God. On which side will you fight? We ask you to enlist on the side of righteousness."

I feel sure that this theory of life would commend itself to the poor, that it would be morally advantageous to the rich, and that it would be politically useful to the State. There has been too prevalent a habit—among those believers especially who ignore Satan and attribute all things to God—of taking for granted that the social inequalities