injure
us at the time, but, in some cases, will fill all our future life with
trials and difficulties and dangers. Many of us shall have all our days
to face a future of defeat, humiliation, impoverishment, and many
hardships, that has not come on us on account of any presumptuous
transgression of God's law so much as simply out of some combination of
unfortunate circumstances in which we may have only done our duty, but
have not done it in the most serpent-like way. And when we are made to
suffer unjustly or disproportionately all our days for our error of
judgment or our want of the wisdom of this world, or what not, we are
sorely tempted to be bitter and proud and resentful and unforgiving, and
to go back from duty and endurance and danger altogether. But we must
not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past,
I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck
safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a
mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to
say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently.
And I must not gloom and rebel and run away from the cross and the lion.
I must not insist or expect that the always wise and prudent man's reward
is to come to me. The lion in my way is a lion of my own rearing; and I
must not turn my back on him, even if he should be let loose to leap on
me and rend me. I must pass under his paw and through his teeth, if need
be, to a life with him and beyond him of humility and duty and
quiet-hearted submission to his God and mine.
Then, again, our salvation itself sometimes, our true sanctification,
puts on a lion's skin and not unsuccessfully imitates an angry lion's
roar. Some saving grace that up till now we have been fatally lacking in
lies under the very lip of that lion we see standing straight in our way.
God in His wisdom so orders our salvation, that we must work out the best
part of it with fear and trembling. Right before us, just beside us,
standing over us with his heavy paw upon us, is a lion, from under whose
paw and from between whose teeth we must pluck and put on that grace in
which our salvation lies. Repentance and reformation lie in the way of
that lion; resignation also and humility; the crucifixion of our own
will; the sacrifice of our own heart; in short, everything that is still
lacking but is indispensable to our salvation lies throug
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