tory tells me and you
nothing; gives us no hope for ourselves, no hope for mankind.

For see. One says, and truly, God is good; God is love; God is
just; God hates oppression and wrong.

BUT if God be love, he must surely show his love by doing loving
things.

If God be just, he must show his justice by doing just things.

If God hates oppression, then he must free the oppressed.

If God hates wrong, then he must set the wrong right.

For what would you think of a man who professed to be loving and
just, and to hate oppression and wrong, and yet never took the
trouble to do a good action, or to put down wrong, when he had the
power? You would call him a hypocrite; you would think his love and
justice very much on his tongue, and not in his heart.

And will you believe that God is like that man? God forbid!

Comfortable scholars and luxurious ladies may content themselves
with a DEAD God, who does not interfere to help the oppressed, to
right the wrong, to bind up the broken-hearted; but men and women
who work, who sorrow, who suffer, who partake of all the ills which
flesh is heir to--they want a LIVING God, an acting God, a God who
WILL interfere to right the wrong. Yes--they want a living God.
And they have a living God--even the God who interfered to bring the
Israelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders, and a mighty hand
and an outstretched arm, and executed judgment upon Pharaoh and his
proud and cruel hosts. And when they read in the Bible of that God,
when they read in their Bibles the story of the Exodus, their hearts
answer, THIS is right. This is the God whom we need. This is what
ought to have happened. This is true: for it must be true. Let
comfortable folks who know no sorrow trouble their brains as to
whether sixty or six hundred thousand fighting men came out of Egypt
with Moses. We care not for numbers. What we care for is, not how
many came out, but who brought them out, and that he who brought
them out was GOD. And the book which tells us that, we will cling
to, will love, will reverence above all the books on earth, because
it tells of a living God, who works and acts and interferes for men;
who not only hates wrong, but rights wrong; not only hates
oppression, but puts oppressors down; not only pities the oppressed,
but sets the oppressed free; a God who not only wills that man
should have freedom, but sent freedom down to him from heaven.

Scholars have said that the old G