It is a comfort to remember that the Scriptures of Truth are not only the record of the faith that was in men, the faith by which they overcame, but also of their doubts. The problems that puzzle and perplex us today were felt before, and men had to learn to stand up to them and face them and contradict them in the power of God
The greatest victory of the Lamb was not when he healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, fed the multitudes, cast out devils, stilled the storm, raised the dead, but when He submitted to appear beaten, baffled, ruined, hanging on a criminal's cross; and that tree of shame placed in the midst of deepest darkness in which He seemed to be forsaken even of His God! What was the testimony He bore in that hour of mystery? Even His enemies allowed: "He trusteth in God." (Matt.27:43, R.V.)
There are times when not individual believers only in their particular soul exercises, but also the Church as a witnessing body on the earth has to go through a similar experience. If I read the meaning of the present hour aright she has reached such an ordeal. How will she behave herself in the face of a mocking world? Will she leave this testimony: "She trusteth in God?" Will she stand to the peaceable principles of Christ's Kingdom in contrast to the "beast" principles of the powers of this world? Will she like her Lord exemplify the power of nonresistance which is the glory and victory of the Cross?
We cannot escape the alternative. Looking abroad at the confusion, the destruction, the letting loose of hellish passions, the glorification of brute force and unreasonable selfishness, intolerable in an individual, but glorified as patriotism if applied to a particular nation: if there is no good and just God at the helm, but only a blind force, then we are caught like little wild creatures in an iron trap. But we cannot contemplate such a terrible alternative. The universe is not a cruel joke. Omnipotent love guides its destinies.
"Where is thy God? The Kingdom of God is within you." If men cannot find God externally, let them turn inward and seek evidences of His reality in their spirit which is His candle, and which, if lit by light from on high, will lead them to a direct acquaintance with the origin of their mysterious personalities. And if they then, bowing before the inward manifestation of the Divine, enthrone Him in their hearts and consciences, they will also find Him on the throne of the universe, and see the dawn of a new and brighter morning breaking the eastern sky.
"We had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead." (2 Cor. 1:9.) Calvary is never God's last word.