Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. d: — A lighted taper inserted into a phial of one kind of gas will burn with the utmost brilliancy and beauty; in another phial, charged with a different kind of gas, that same taper will become extinguished in offensive smoke, and in a third it would produce an instantaneous and violent explosion. So the same calamity — sickness, bereavement, commercial disaster — will awaken in one man a slumbering conscience, will drive another to distraction, and a third it will draw nearer to God than ever; so that, whilst it is literally and undeniably true that the same calamities come alike upon the good and evil, it is a transparent fallacy to infer that the same ulterior results will follow in both cases. It is a fallacy to maintain that a curse may not remain a curse, or be transformed into a blessing, according as it is accepted as a salutary discipline or rebelled against as an arbitrary infliction. It is on the temper of the recipient that the result depends, and whether or not all things, good or ill, concur to his advantage. Does it not depend upon the use you make of anything, whether it becomes to you a blessing or a curse? Beneath the petals of a graceful and familiar flower is secreted a sedative poison, of such quality that it will frequently steep a man in such a slumber as only the last trumpet can awake him from. This you at once recognise as opium. You cannot cause water to boil for the most ordinary culinary purpose, but you disengage an element most formidable, the most irresistible power of expansion. This is steam. No summer passes over you, but you see the lightning tear the sky across as if it were a scroll of paper. This is electricity. These three agents, electricity, steam, and poison, to the mind of an untutored savage, are nothing but instruments of death. But a man of science in that deadly narcotic detects the principle of morphine; he compounds it with suitable ingredients, and converts it into one of the most inestimable and indispensable preparations in the pharmacopoeia. From death he extracts life. In steam he snatches, as it were, from the hand of Nature one of her most gigantic powers, and compels it to become the most obedient and the most versatile of his servants. Nay, the very lightning he enlists and disciplines into an obedient recruit. And in such wise is all this true of all these forces and many more, that while to the uncultured savage they are agents of death and objects of terror, they are working together for the comfort and benefit of him who has learned how to use them. Such is a faint illustration of the way in which the same occurrence may act with diametrically opposite results upon the practical Christian and upon the man who lives without God in the world. In the godless exciting rebellion and hardness of heart, and in the Christian pointing to filial submission, confiding holiness, and life eternal; forasmuch as all things — all things — work together for the good of them that are true to God. (W. H. Brookfield, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. |
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