They
do not believe with too strong faith; their faith is too dim of
sight, too feeble of grasp, too wanting in certainty. I regret that
they should ever seem to undervalue the Scriptures. For those
scriptures have flowed out of the same spirit which is in every pure
heart; and I would have the one spirit recognise and respond to
itself under all the multiform shapes of word, of deed, of faith, of
love, of thought, of affection, in which it is enrobed; just as that
spirit in us recognises and responds to itself now in the gloom of
winter, now in the cheer of summer, now in the bloom of spring, now
in the maturity of autumn; and in all the endless varieties of each."
The Friend writes thus.
"Hold fast, I beseech you, to the resolution to wait for light
from the Lord. Go not to men for a creed, faint not, but be of good
courage. The darkness is only for a season. We must be willing to
tarry the Lord's time in the wilderness, if we would enter the
Promised Land. The purest saints that I have ever known were long,
very long, in darkness and in doubt. Even when they had firm faith,
they were long without _feeling_ what they _believed in_.
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