p. 179 | ANXIETY VERSUS TRUST

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 12.

ANXIETY VERSUS TRUST.

ONE day while Flattich, a pious minister of Wirtemberg, was sitting and meditating in his arm-chair, one of his foster-children fell out of a second-story window right before him, down upon the pavement below. He calmly ordered his daughter to go down and pick up the child. On doing so, she found the child not only alive, but without having sustained the least injury. The noise occasioned thereby had called out a neighbor's wife, who reproached Flattich for his want of attention to his foster-children; for she had seen him quietly reposing in his arm-chair when the boy fell out of the window. While she was thus scolding, her own child, which she had brought along, fell from a bench in the room and broke one of its arms.

"Do you see, good woman," said Flattich, "if you imagine yourself to be the sole guardian of your child, then you must constantly carry it on your arm. I commend my children to God, and if they fall they fall into the arms of an angel."

Maclaren, in alluding to unavailing anxiety, says: "After all your watching for the corner of the heaven where the cloud is to come from, there will be a cloud, and it will rise somewhere, but you will never know in what quarter. The morrow shall have its own anxieties. After all your fortifying of the castle of your life, there will be some little postern left unguarded, some little weak place in the wall left uncommanded by a battery; and there, where you never look for him, the inevitable invader will come in. After all the plunging of the hero in the fabled waters that made him invulnerable, there was the little spot on the heel, and the arrow found its way there."

Bulstrode Whitlock, Cromwell's envoy to Sweden, was one night so disturbed in mind over the state of his nation that he could not sleep. His servant, observing it, said: "Pray, sir, will you give me leave to ask you a question?" "Certainly." "Do you think that God governed the world very well before you came into it?" "Undoubtedly." "And do you not think that he will govern the world quite as well when you are gone out of it?" "Certainly." "Then, pray, sir, excuse me, do you not think that you may trust him to govern it as long as you live?" No answer could be given, and composure and sleep followed.

Fresenius, a pious minister at Frankfort-on-the-Main, one day found his mother, who was a widow, concerned about a dollar which she much needed at the time, but did not know whence to procure. Not being able at that instant to furnish her with one, he said: "I likewise believe that you must have the dollar. I accordingly turn this hour-glass, and assure you that if the dollar is really needed, it will positively lie here on the table before the hour-glass is run down. If it does not lie here, God will convince us after this hour, that it was not as indispensable as we imagine." The hour-glass was scarcely run down one-half when a messenger arrived, who had traversed an eight hours' walk, bringing a dollar which someone was owing to Fresenius.

From Cromwell, we have this world-wide brevity, "Trust in the Lord, and keep your powder dry." And Sevinnock says, "We lie to God in prayer if we do not rely upon him after prayer."

Would that all anxious souls might learn the sweetness of Rutherford's trustful song, "I lay my head on the bosom of Omnipotence."—Ernest Gilmore, in Christian at Work.