Vicissitudes of Faith

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 20, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 12.

Vicissitudes of Faith.

How common it is for Christians to talk of their faith being strengthened by gifts from God which are just in the line of their desires and fancies; and of their faith being weakened, or sorely tried, by things from God which are not what they have asked for. This is much as it would be, for a child to measure his father's love by the amount of candy and the number of toys brought home to the little one. A father's love is shown in the gift of school-books and medicines in their time, quite as surely as in the gift of candy and toys in their time. And God's love is shown quite as much in his bestowal of what we shrink from, as in his gift of what we long for. It is very well for us to talk of our faith being strengthened by the evident results of God's dealings with us; not by our estimate of the dealings themselves before we can know the reason for them as God sees it now, and as we can hope to see it by and by. Faith is not sight; faith rests on the Giver, sight measures the gift. Christians are to "walk by faith, not by sight."—Sel.