Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1877 — Christian Resignation. [ARTICLE]

Christian Resignation.

“ I have been forced,” said Fletcher, “by many disappointments to look for comfort in nothing but in the comprehensive words, ‘ Thy will be done.’ ” The experience of every regenerate heart in periods of trial leads more or less to the same unfailing refuge. This lesson of Christian resignation is often a hard one to learn. Sometimes it costs us unnumbered crosses and sorrows. Not infrequently the hope and affections of years have to be laid tearfully upon the altar. Often when we are almost persuaded that we have learned to say, " Thy will be done,” the loosing of some cherished tie, or the failure of some darling project, reveals us again to ourselves in all our insubordination of heart. But the lesson is nevertheless as salutary as its process is severe. The value of Christian submissiveness, when it is once found, has a wondrous power to alleviate the pains and heal the sorrows of life. ' True Christian resignation is, however, essentially distinct from that passive submission to the inevitable which many exhibit in the presence of affliction. The spirit of rebellion to the Divine will may lurk under the forms of surrender. The resignation which does not spring from a loving heait, which does not look up even through the tears and agony of bitter trial, and see the hand of a wise and merciful Father through it all, to not the spirit of resignation which Christianity requires. It to not the reluctant yielding to superior power which constitutes true resignation, but rather the spirit which to forward to bow, which feels all the smart of the chastisement, but which still finds in the midst of it all a sweet consciousness of God’s presence, and a most precious sense of humility and self-relinquishment. > It is in this spirit that the disciples were instructed to pray, “ Thy will be done.” It was thus that the Psalmist, when flesh and heart failed him, found God the strength of his heart and his portion forever. It was in this same spirit of loving patience and trust that Paul declares that he is “troubled, but not distressed; afflicted, but not cast down.” There is in all this not stoicism , but true Christian resignation. Paul looks for Christ's sake with a noble disregard upon persecutions and earthly trials. What to other men seem insufferable agonies, to his clearer faith are only “ light afflictions, which are for a moment,” and which are not to be compared with that “ far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” which reveals itself in such unspeakable fullness beyond —a vision that, with all its redundancy of rapt expression, still seems to be vainly struggling for embodiment, with the poverty of human language and the dimness of human sight In a time of gloom and apprehension like the present, this spirit of patience and Christian resignation is especially needful. We should pray for ourselves, for others, for our common Christianity, for our country, for the triumph of law, and justice, and right. But, above all, we should pray, “ Thy will be done.” If we cannot read or reach the full purposes of Providence, as they are revealed in storm and sunshine, in personal trials, or in National perils and disasters, we may at least learn to listen reverently to the voice of Him who rules and overrules all things in the largest wisdom, and for the largest human good, " Be still, and know that I am God.”— London Baptiet.