and does best, and that it meets his dispensations
with obedience and his mysteries with faith. The apathy and hardihood
to which I have alluded are very far from the trust and piety of a
religious spirit. The fatalist acquiesces in the course of things
because he cannot help it. He has reasoned to the conclusion that his
murmuring and weeping will not alter matters and he has resolved to take
things as they come. But here is no resignation to the will of God, but
to the necessity of things. Here is no faith that all things are wisely
ordered, and that sorrow is but the shadow of the Father's hand. No;
here is the simple belief that things are as they are, and cannot be
altered,-that an arbitrary law is the eternal rule, not a benevolent
and holy purpose; and the philosopher would be just as resigned if he
believed all things to be under the guidance of a blind fate, whose iron
machinery drives on to level or exalt, unintelligent and remorseless,
whether in its course it brings about good or evil,-whether it gladdens
human hearts or crushes them. Such resignation as this may be quite
common in the world, manifested in various phases, and by men of
different religious opinions. Do we not often hear the expression,
"Well, things are as they are,-we do best to take them as they come;"
and here the matter ends? No higher reference is made. The things
alluded to may issue from the bosom of material nature, may be sent into
the world by chance, or may come from the good Father of all; but the
minds of these reasoners reach not so far. Now I repeat, there is no
religion and no true philosophy in this method; certainly it is not
such resignation as Jesus manifested. In fact, it indicates total
carelessness as to the discipline of life, and will generally be found
with men in whose thoughts God is not, or to whose conceptions he is
the distant, inactive Deity, not the near and ever-working Controller. I
cannot admire the conduct of that man who when the bolt of sorrow falls,
receives it upon the armor of a rigid fatalism, who wipes scarcely a
tear from his hard, dry face, and says, "Well, it cannot be helped;
things are so ordered." Below all this there is often a sulky,
half-angry sentiment, as though the victim felt the blow, but was
determined not to wince,-as though there was an acknowledgment of
weakness, but also a display of pride,-a feeling that we cannot resist
sorrow, yet that sorrow has no business to come, and now that