Sometimes when I try to confess my sins, I feel that after all I am
more to be pitied than blamed, for I have never known the time when I
have not had a temptation within me so strong that it was certain I
should not overcome it. This thought shocks me, but it comes with such
force, and so appealingly, to all my consciousness, that it stifles
all sense of sin. . . .
"Sometimes when I read the Bible, it seems to be wholly grounded on
the idea that the sin of man is astonishing, inexcusable, and without
palliation or cause, and the atonement is spoken of as such a
wonderful and undeserved mercy that I am filled with amazement. Yet if
I give up the Bible I gain nothing, for the providence of God in
nature is just as full of mystery, and of the two I think that the
Bible, with all its difficulties, is preferable to being without it;
for the Bible holds out the hope that in a future world all shall be
made plain. . . . So you see I am, as Mr. Hawes says, 'on the waves,'
and all I can do is to take the word of God that He does do right and
there I rest."
The following summer, in July, she writes to Edward: "I have never
been so happy as this summer. I began it in more suffering than I ever
before have felt, but there is One whom I daily thank for all that
suffering, since I hope that it has brought me at last to rest
entirely in Him. I do hope that my long, long course of wandering and
darkness and unhappiness is over, and that I have found in Him who
died for me all, and more than all, I could desire.
Pages:
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72