WHEREVER I turn the sacred pages of the Bible, I continually find passages which tell of God's goodness to those who trust in Him. In that wonderful masterpiece, the world's greatest oration, Christ's Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Just previous to making this declaration, Jesus had been talking of all those things which are necessary for mortal man's needs. Now, can it be possible that in order to get you and me to worship at His shrine, God holds out inducements which fail to materialize? Is it possible that He makes His promises in order to get us to follow Him, and then when we do follow Him as He demands, that He should laugh us to scorn. and by not answering our prayers give us to understand that He only meant half that He said, and that the smallest half? I do not want to worship that kind of a God, do you?
I believe that what the Bible says is true, and if I do not receive the blessings in store for the true follower of God, that I am to blame because of my lack of understanding. And when I look around me and see good, honest, honorable, upright men, who have dedicated their lives to the preaching of the Word of God and the up-building of His kingdom, when I see these men, one by one, laying aside their clerical robes and leaving their chosen profession, because their health is broken and their constitution wrecked, I feel that there is something wrong in the common understanding of the religion of Jesus Christ. And, when I leave the pulpits and visit the pews and find great numbers of those who worship in these sanctuaries who are weighed down with disease and its accompanying pain and sorrow, and sometimes poverty, and I turn to their Bible and read, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light," I feel again that something is' wrong somewhere; for, in the tenth chapter of Proverbs at the twenty-secondverse, we read, "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it." And believing the Bible as I do, I feel that the mistake is with him who suffers, and not with God.
If all these discordant results above mentioned are God's doing He is worse than the average man; for the average man will bestow good gifts upon his children instead of bad. Would you reward a faithful follower of yours in such a manner? Would you thus recompense your child who might be following in your footsteps to the best of his ability, preaching your gospel and proclaiming your goodness throughout the land? Of course you would not. And you are only a human parent, while our heavenly Parent is divine. If the cattle on a thousand hills were yours and you had a daughter who was a widow and who loved you with her whole heart and served you as best she could and honored your name above all others, would you stand idly by and hear her little children cry for bread or see them suffering with cold? Of course you would not; and you are only a human parent, while our heavenly Parent is divine. It is just such conditions as these that have provoked remarks like the following; "While the poor Christian widow was breaking her crust and thanking God, the rich profligate was sitting down to his feast and saying, 'What a great man am I.'" say to you that it is deplorable that the beautiful theory of the Christian religion and the actual condition of its followers should be such as to furnish an absolute basis for those words of the critic.
