Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?
The crooked and changing scenes of life belong to the work of God, and no one is able to make straight what he has made crooked. Adversity is set over against prosperity by his appointment, so that human beings must trust him without knowing what will come afterward. If there were only prosperity, they would lean upon it, forget him, and fail to make ready for heaven and an eternal life of righteousness.
What has become crooked cannot be straightened by human effort, and the past cannot be undone. Past wrongs and sorrows are therefore to be left with God rather than mourned over, while with a contrite heart his pardon is sought and his pledged word is trusted. He alone can cleanse the past, so the duty is to live faithfully today and to prepare for tomorrow. The same unyielding fixedness is pictured by a tree that has grown crooked for twenty years and cannot be pulled straight. Its condition shows how habits harden and become difficult to change once they are allowed to take root, so resistance to unkind thoughts and harmful habits should begin early, although reform is still to be attempted with God's help.
There is no gain in amending the work of God, for he made the human body perfect, with woman as his last work, and human skill must not presume to remodel and strengthen it. The corset violates this order by acting as a splint, bandage, and crutch that hinders natural breathing and injures woman. To reshape the body in this way insults the Creator by implying that his work was imperfect and casts stigma upon omniscience.
The crooked and changing scenes of life belong to the work of God, and no one is able to make straight what he has made crooked. Adversity is set over against prosperity by his appointment, so that human beings must trust him without knowing what will come afterward. If there were only prosperity, they would lean upon it, forget him, and fail to make ready for heaven and an eternal life of righteousness.
What has become crooked cannot be straightened by human effort, and the past cannot be undone. Past wrongs and sorrows are therefore to be left with God rather than mourned over, while with a contrite heart his pardon is sought and his pledged word is trusted. He alone can cleanse the past, so the duty is to live faithfully today and to prepare for tomorrow. The same unyielding fixedness is pictured by a tree that has grown crooked for twenty years and cannot be pulled straight. Its condition shows how habits harden and become difficult to change once they are allowed to take root, so resistance to unkind thoughts and harmful habits should begin early, although reform is still to be attempted with God's help.
There is no gain in amending the work of God, for he made the human body perfect, with woman as his last work, and human skill must not presume to remodel and strengthen it. The corset violates this order by acting as a splint, bandage, and crutch that hinders natural breathing and injures woman. To reshape the body in this way insults the Creator by implying that his work was imperfect and casts stigma upon omniscience.