Finding Fault with Providence.
By Examiner
THERE is reason in finding fault, if there is either hope of thereby amending the fault or of uttering useful warning. Applied to the actions of our fellow-men, adverse criticism is sometimes legitimate. But when the matter complained of lies out of the reach of human interference or control, the language of complaint strikes past all intermediate agents to the Most High. He who accuses, accuses God. But among the things that are above and beyond our determination, one is obviously the weather. It is God who “causes his sun to rise” and “sendeth rain.” It makes no difference, as to the present question, whether we can conceive of the action of divine Providence as direct and particular, or as limited to the institution of general laws. In either case, the weather is what it is by the appointment of God. He who complains of the weather makes complaint of God. And what is more common? We read, the other day, a paragraph in a daily paper which spoke of “execrable weather”—weather, that is, worthy to be execrated, or cursed. Would not a cursing of the weather be dangerously near to cursing our Maker? This is a matter on which many Christians, it is to be feared, do not sufficiently reflect. They fall too easily into the fashions of speech that are common, without sufficiently considering what they are saying. We may wish the weather were different, and may express that wish in a proper manner. But when we allow ourselves to be impatient, and to “charge God foolishly,” it is but too plain that he “is not in our thoughts.”—Examiner.