"
29. It seems strange that I should have been permitted to wander into
doubt and unbelief, and live so long under its darkness and horrors.
There is a mystery about it that I cannot understand. But what I know
not now, I may know hereafter. The mystery of Job's trial was explained
when his afflictions were at an end. The mystery of my strange trial is
still wrapt up in darkness. True, my strange experience has not been an
unmixed calamity. It has brought me advantages which I could not
otherwise have enjoyed. I know things which I never could have known, if
I had always remained within the enclosures of the Church, and under the
influence of Christianity. And my heart is more subdued to the will of
God. I am more at one with Him than I ever was before. I love Him more.
I love Jesus more. I love His religion more. I have a clearer view and a
fuller knowledge of its infinite worth. I have, of course, a fuller
knowledge of the horrors of infidelity. And my faith in God and
Christianity rests on a firmer foundation than it did in my early days.
Many things which I once only _believed_, I now _know_. Many things for
which I had formerly only the testimony of others, I now know to be true
by my own experience. There are quite a multitude of things on which I
have greater certainty, and on which I can, in consequence, speak with
more authority than in my early days.
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