How many times in these United States have you gone to visit someone and were admonished at the front door, “We don’t allow the discussion of politics or religion in this house!”

Even if it is an unspoken rule, the lack of discourse of both politics and religion and how they are related, dare I a say as a civil discussion, is what has gotten America into our current position.

Just mention Sarah Palin and a volcano of anger or praise erupts almost instantaneously and soon volcanic ash threatens to block out the sun. If someone doesn’t change the subject pretty soon, air traffic will have to be diverted around the area.

Underlying all this joy and mirth is the clashing of worldviews.

One view believes that there is a God, who created everything not all that long ago, and mankind was created in the image of God.

The scientific worldview does not believe in god, maybe aliens, but nothing exists but the natural material reality that evolved by quantum leaps of intellectual complexity over millions and billions of years.

A third worldview states that they believe in God but are agnostic on how it all came to be and where we are going, because they just have enough trouble dealing with daily life.

The forth group believes essentially that they are the zenith of evolution, and because of their superior intellect, the rest of us should acquiesce to their understanding of how it all works, and likewise thank and serve them for being so very magnanimous. These are the Social Darwinists, who now are the dominant religion in America, but as we will see as we continue, are facing a conundrum of epic proportions, that will very soon lead to a battle to the finish among the members. The survival of progressive evolution is at stake and to victor belong not only the spoils, but the vanquished will be eliminated from the gene pool.

So if you happen to be in one of the first three religious groups, for the time being, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sit back, relax, turn on your television, open a cool one of your choice, and watch the battle unfold.

Well just between you and me, the battle has been rigged, because both of the participants have already been found to have fatal weaknesses, but that does not mean that this sport will not be worth watching.

So let the battle begin!
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Tags: Sarah Palin, Social Darwinism, God, evolution, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Ronald Reagan, Curtis Mayfield, Barack Obama

The United States of America used to be understood by the slogan, “Out of many — one.” It is now becoming better defined as, “Out of many — chaos.”

This evolution has taken place most dramatically in the last fifty years, but those chaotic roots run deep for at least the last century.

In January, when we began the “Why Me? A Novel — Novel of Historic Apprehension” it looked like there was a window in America’s trek to Gomorrah, in which we could develop a little historic context about how we got here and where we were headed, regardless of the desires of mice and men. It looks like the mice are holding up quite well in contrast to the best intentions of American leadership, but a couple realities did begin to be seen as “Why Me?” progressed, which show as early buds of the coming American political spring.

During those four months it was easy to anticipate the passage of Obamacare, but the firestorm of issues related to the individual mandate for people to purchase insurance, angered individuals, but also set off a spring burn of protests at the state level. Who would have thought at the beginning of the year that about a third of the states would begin to act like real sovereign states. All this time we thought they were extinct, except for collecting taxes and creating arcane regulations. We will here attempt to put some natural spring into these new found rumblings. We will look at the heavy lifting of what is just beginning under the Washington guise of “Financial Reform” in our Wednesday article.

I would suppose one could make the case that the concept of state dependency began during the Great Depression and the New Deal that followed. But the way the history has hyped that period among all the enlightenment progressive spin, it makes it impossible to find the states at all. Those who are yet still alive and actually went through that period were too young understand the context.

However using estimated dates beginning with the Civil Rights Movement: 1955-1968; the Viet Nam War Protests: 1965-1975; and the Environmental Movement: 1962-1981; we essentially saw urban intellectual evolution commandeer all aspects of American unity and those who disagreed with their worldview were vilified as: racists, warmongers, and primitive knuckle draggers.

This as continued to evolve until today, we have the Lame Stream Media basically becoming propaganda asylums, and fair and balanced reporting, sponsoring battling pundit promotions. What is lost in all this is the fact that human beings were generally created to like one another and to help one another succeed. In that respect to believe that a bloated Federal government can fix societies ills is truly insanity.
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Tags: evolution, God, ObamaCare, Social Darwinism, ecological climax, energetics, Arizona, ecological diversity

Morning
This do in remembrance of Me.
1 Corinthians 11:24

It seems then, that Christians may forget Christ! There could be no need for this loving exhortation, if there were not a fearful supposition that our memories might prove treacherous. Nor is this a bare supposition: it is, alas! too well confirmed in our experience, not as a possibility, but as a lamentable fact. It appears almost impossible that those who have been redeemed by the blood of the dying Lamb, and loved with an everlasting love by the eternal Son of God, should forget that gracious Saviour; but, if startling to the ear, it is, alas! too apparent to the eye to allow us to deny the crime. Forget Him who never forgot us! Forget Him who poured His blood forth for our sins! Forget Him who loved us even to the death! Can it be possible? Yes, it is not only possible, but conscience confesses that it is too sadly a fault with all of us, that we suffer Him to be as a wayfaring man tarrying but for a night. He whom we should make the abiding tenant of our memories is but a visitor therein. The cross where one would think that memory would linger, and unmindfulness would be an unknown intruder, is desecrated by the feet of forgetfulness. Does not your conscience say that this is true? Do you not find yourselves forgetful of Jesus? Some creature steals away your heart, and you are unmindful of Him upon whom your affection ought to be set. Some earthly business engrosses your attention when you should fix your eye steadily upon the cross. It is the incessant turmoil of the world, the constant attraction of earthly things which takes away the soul from Christ. While memory too well preserves a poisonous weed, it suffereth the rose of Sharon to wither. Let us charge ourselves to bind a heavenly forget-me-not about our hearts for Jesus our Beloved, and, whatever else we let slip, let us hold fast to Him.

Evening
Blessed is he that watcheth.
Revelation 16:15

"We die daily," said the apostle. This was the life of the early Christians; they went everywhere with their lives in their hands. We are not in this day called to pass through the same fearful persecutions: if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test; but the tests of Christian life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are yet more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age. We have to bear the sneer of the world--that is little; its blandishments, its soft words, its oily speeches, its fawning, its hypocrisy, are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the trial, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, if we may be hugged to death by the bear, the devil little cares which it is, so long as he destroys our love to Christ, and our confidence in Him. I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God. Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardour; you need these things more than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display His omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher, "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

This week we bring you the final installment of this series of, “Why Me? A Novel — Novel of Historic Apprehension.” In keeping with the novel – novel theme we have looked at some of the major theses, or paradigms of historic western culture and how many times it was the antitheses of these original beliefs that brought about change, sometimes stupendous change. And amazingly in this historic context, much of this change can be considered beneficial.

In closing this series, all of our readers, whether in the United States, or elsewhere in the world, recognize that the changes we are experiencing are what we describe as stupendous. In that light the concept of “change we can believe in” seems grossly simplistic if not truly oxymoronic. As a result we all sense an excitement, but at the same time an anticipation of apprehension that mankind has truly never past this way before, especially when that concept is enlarged, as we are asked to “think globally.”

The title to this chapter is an adaptation of the title of a book by Robert Bork entitled, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and the American Decline” first published in 1996. Bork was one of Ronald Reagan’s appointments to the Supreme Court, who never made it through the Senates conformation process, because he was vilified by his opponents as being an extremist. From that process came the invention of the term “borked,” which seems amazingly close to what is happening currently to the American people, by what is now being called “crony capitalists — media — politicians.”

Slouching is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, and the title shows historically how we have pretty much through just passive neglect dumbed down the world in which we live, to the point that we will someday face destruction similar to the Biblical Gomorrah.

The divergence in the world today and the world over a decade ago, is that a slow slothful meander towards oblivion has been replaced with defined action, as if we just can no longer wait to get to Gomorrah, we have the city in our sights and together with all our baggage we are hell-bent to get there as soon as possible. In many ways Gomorrah has become our biblical replacement of the shining city on a hill, representing a New Jerusalem of many of America’s Christian founders.
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Tags: Gomorrah, Robert Bork, Bill Clinton, Great Society, Viet Nam, George W. Bush, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, Chicago, Social Darwinism, Soviet Union, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan

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Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the domestic terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Subsequent to that act an unrepentant, Timothy McVeigh, was found guilty and was executed. There is a very old saying that goes, “Actions speak louder than words.” Last week former President Clinton made remarks saying that he saw similarities between the words of Tea Party participants and that bombing which took place on 19 April 1995. Of course there has been a lot of media attention to those remarks, but none seem intelligent enough to see perhaps a link to the words and maybe the actions of then President Clinton, which may have contributed to McVeigh’s actions just a little over two years after the President began his first term.

Also last week, here in the USA, land of liberty, home of the free and the brave, President Obama made somewhat similar condescending remarks about how funny traditionally minded Tea Party participants were acting. In the context that he has fixed America’s continuing problems; with programs more outmoded than any our Chinese government partners could envision. Once we sock it to those Fat Cat bankers, and create all sorts of user fees for everything under the sun, it will be nice to know that the President has not raised the income taxes on those Americans who make less than $200,000.

I do have to agree with the President however, if the Tea Party people think that by attending some rallies, carrying some signs, and even electing some more conservative Republicans, to replace those awful liberal Democrats, they will in someway change the politics in Washington and business on Wall Street, then that is really a ironic joke. Sad, definitely true but still despairingly amusing.

Listening to the President, his staff, and his media amigos, happy days are here again. Rah! Rah! Rah! Well happy days may be back for Wall Street and federal workers, but those happy days here, are about as far away as the distance to New York City and Washington DC. Here in the Northeast corner of the other Washington (State) things are as bad as they have ever been and that may include the Great Depression.

Of course any of those people who were alive during the Great Depression and old enough to remember the details of those hard times; they are now dead. Back then those people who lived out west were a pretty much self sufficient lot. Everyone grew most of their own food, raised their own meat, and canned or put it up for the winter. There might not have been a lot of variety in the daily table course, but people didn’t go hungry, and if someone was in need their neighbors helped them out. Read More...

Tags: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, tea party, Washington State, Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Glenn Beck, PREFER Ltd

Morning
She bound the scarlet line in the window.
Joshua 2:21

Rahab depended for her preservation upon the promise of the spies, whom she looked upon as the representatives of the God of Israel. Her faith was simple and firm, but it was very obedient. To tie the scarlet line in the window was a very trivial act in itself, but she dared not run the risk of omitting it. Come, my soul, is there not here a lesson for thee? Hast thou been attentive to all thy Lord's will, even though some of His commands should seem non-essential? Hast thou observed in his own way the two ordinances of believers' baptism and the Lord's Supper? These neglected, argue much unloving disobedience in thy heart. Be henceforth in all things blameless, even to the tying of a thread, if that be matter of command.

This act of Rahab sets forth a yet more solemn lesson. Have I implicitly trusted in the precious blood of Jesus? Have I tied the scarlet cord, as with a Gordian knot in my window, so that my trust can never be removed? Or can I look out towards the Dead Sea of my sins, or the Jerusalem of my hopes, without seeing the blood, and seeing all things in connection with its blessed power? The passer-by can see a cord of so conspicuous a colour, if it hangs from the window: it will be well for me if my life makes the efficacy of the atonement conspicuous to all onlookers. What is there to be ashamed of? Let men or devils gaze if they will, the blood is my boast and my song. My soul, there is One who will see that scarlet line, even when from weakness of faith thou canst not see it thyself; Jehovah, the Avenger, will see it and pass over thee. Jericho's walls fell flat: Rahab's house was on the wall, and yet it stood unmoved; my nature is built into the wall of humanity, and yet when destruction smites the race, I shall be secure. My soul, tie the scarlet thread in the window afresh, and rest in peace.

Evening
And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good.
Genesis 32:12

When Jacob was on the other side of the brook Jabbok, and Esau was coming with armed men, he earnestly sought God's protection, and as a master reason he pleaded, "And Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good." Oh, the force of that plea! He was holding God to His word--"Thou saidst." The attribute of God's faithfulness is a splendid horn of the altar to lay hold upon; but the promise, which has in it the attribute and something more, is a yet mightier holdfast--"Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good." And has He said, and shall He not do it? "Let God be true, and every man a liar." Shall not He be true? Shall He not keep His word? Shall not every word that cometh out of His lips stand fast and be fulfilled? Solomon, at the opening of the temple, used this same mighty plea. He pleaded with God to remember the word which He had spoken to his father David, and to bless that place. When a man gives a promissory note, his honour is engaged; he signs his hand, and he must discharge it when the due time comes, or else he loses credit. It shall never be said that God dishonours His bills. The credit of the Most High never was impeached, and never shall be. He is punctual to the moment: He never is before His time, but He never is behind it. Search God's word through, and compare it with the experience of God's people, and you shall find the two tally from the first to the last. Many a hoary patriarch has said with Joshua, "Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass." If you have a divine promise, you need not plead it with an "if," you may urge it with certainty. The Lord meant to fulfil the promise, or He would not have given it. God does not give His words merely to quiet us, and to keep us hopeful for awhile with the intention of putting us off at last; but when He speaks, it is because He means to do as He has said.

As I was writing Monday’s post on “2 BIG 2 Work,” I began thinking about the concept that perhaps the problems now facing the United States and really the broader world concept of globalization stems from the reality all have gotten 2 BIG 2 fail and simultaneously 2 BIG 2 work.

What a better closing paradigm for this “Why Me?” series! Failure isn’t my fault because everything just sort of quit working because of bad karma, and since I only think good thoughts about everything, except a few bad stuff moments, I am completely off the hook for all the bad stuff that happens.

Now I will have to admit the 2 BIG 2 Work concept was stolen from Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. Whether it was original with him I do not know, but it surely does describe a whole lot of what is happening all around us. In the context that I heard from him, he was talking about the Federalization of too big to fail financial institutions, but what if the whole country at the national level is getting simply 2BIG 2 Work.

Albert Einstein gave us the Theory of Relativity, but he then spent the rest of his life trying to develop a scientific General Theory of Why, but was never able to get there. I would submit that without God it is a philosophic tautology, and with God it becomes undefinable, because of the natural limits of human created capacity. So if a real general theory is impossible for man, why not dumb it down and talk about just the universe of human governance?

We must begin in Ivy League prose where it goes something like, “The cognitive limited diversity of our educational paradigm provides incongruous perceptions of natural reality.” In the media perception of the Tea Party movement, “Wees’ jist don’t knows no betta!”
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Tags: 2 BIG 2 Work, governance, Bernie Goldberg, Adam Smith, federal governance, U S Constitution, Ronald Reagan, flat tax, fair tax

The bellyachers are giving me a headache. Well, actually they seem to be more akin to a pain at the end of the alimentary canal, but unless it is phrased in that way, it becomes politically incorrect. Let me see if I have got this straight? You have a beef with the fact that you have to pay way too much income tax when you and yours gross six figures a year and nearly half of the American households pay nothing.

It is really too bad that your mortgage is upside down by about 50% and your 401k and the rest of your investments lost about the same, and you still are not back on track to retiring early, with only your four thousand square foot McMansion in the ‘burbs, and your two thousand square foot second home in the foreign paradise. You can cry me a river, but I really don’t care. Welcome to the real world.

Bah! Bah! Bah! You went to work everyday, did the best you could, never took any real risk and suddenly you were a millionaire. Well, at least you were a millionaire. Nobody ever called you a sheep, sheep can’t leverage a mid-level professional job, with really only bureaucratic skills, into a million bucks. Truly this was an absolute miracle, helped along with cheap credit, marketing, and educational propaganda. After all you are worth it, and you have the room full of seventh place trophies to prove it.

Suddenly the 2 BIG 2 work vultures from the government want you to pay what they call your fair share. It isn’t just the Feds, it’s the state, the county, and the city too. Even the home owners association wants more money to keep the water feature pumping. Just like me, they all don’t want to hear your story of an American Dream of a pampered upbringing turned into gentrified nausea. You had it all, peaches and cream, and now it is time to pay the dues.

Perhaps you didn’t DVR Alan Greenspan on C-Span last week when he said he thought he was doing the right thing during lllooonnnggg his term at the Fed, and now in hindsight there may have been just a few tweaks of the economy that might have led to a continuing-continuum of eternal prosperity. However now that this bubble burst and after ObamaCare has passed, old Alan has some fresh insights that we might not be able to pay for everything at the same time.

Maybe you should send him one of your seventh place trophies for a reward!
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Tags: Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, 2 BIG 2 Work

Morning
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
Psalm 22:14

Did earth or heaven ever behold a sadder spectacle of woe! In soul and body, our Lord felt Himself to be weak as water poured upon the ground. The placing of the cross in its socket had shaken Him with great violence, had strained all the ligaments, pained every nerve, and more or less dislocated all His bones. Burdened with His own weight, the august sufferer felt the strain increasing every moment of those six long hours. His sense of faintness and general weakness were overpowering; while to His own consciousness He became nothing but a mass of misery and swooning sickness. When Daniel saw the great vision, he thus describes his sensations, "There remained no strength in me, for my vigour was turned into corruption, and I retained no strength:" how much more faint must have been our greater Prophet when He saw the dread vision of the wrath of God, and felt it in His own soul! To us, sensations such as our Lord endured would have been insupportable, and kind unconsciousness would have come to our rescue; but in His case, He was wounded, and felt the sword; He drained the cup and tasted every drop.

O King of Grief! (a title strange, yet true
To Thee of all kings only due)
O King of Wounds! how shall I grieve for Thee,
Who in all grief preventest me!

As we kneel before our now ascended Saviour's throne, let us remember well the way by which He prepared it as a throne of grace for us; let us in spirit drink of His cup, that we may be strengthened for our hour of heaviness whenever it may come. In His natural body every member suffered, and so must it be in the spiritual; but as out of all His griefs and woes His body came forth uninjured to glory and power, even so shall His mystical body come through the furnace with not so much as the smell of fire upon it.

Evening
Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.
Psalm 25:18

It is well for us when prayers about our sorrows are linked with pleas concerning our sins--when, being under God's hand, we are not wholly taken up with our pain, but remember our offences against God. It is well, also, to take both sorrow and sin to the same place. It was to God that David carried his sorrow: it was to God that David confessed his sin. Observe, then, we must take our sorrows to God. Even your little sorrows you may roll upon God, for He counteth the hairs of your head; and your great sorrows you may commit to Him, for He holdeth the ocean in the hollow of His hand. Go to Him, whatever your present trouble may be, and you shall find Him able and willing to relieve you. But we must take our sins to God too. We must carry them to the cross, that the blood may fall upon them, to purge away their guilt, and to destroy their defiling power.

The special lesson of the text is this:--that we are to go to the Lord with sorrows and with sins in the right spirit. Note that all David asks concerning his sorrow is, "Look upon mine affliction and my pain;" but the next petition is vastly more express, definite, decided, plain--"Forgive all my sins" Many sufferers would have put it, "Remove my affliction and my pain, and look at my sins." But David does not say so; he cries, "Lord, as for my affliction and my pain, I will not dictate to Thy wisdom. Lord, look at them, I will leave them to Thee, I should be glad to have my pain removed, but do as Thou wilt; but as for my sins, Lord, I know what I want with them; I must have them forgiven; I cannot endure to lie under their curse for a moment." A Christian counts sorrow lighter in the scale than sin; he can bear that his troubles should continue, but he cannot support the burden of his transgressions.

Last week we closed the Sheep to Wolves article with the signature paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

If you would like to know the succinct answer on why the United States finds itself in its present predicament, a new version of those thoughts would go somewhat as follows:

With a firm reliance on the my personal virtue of unfettered greed, I will do whatever necessary to get ahead according to my definition of success, giving no thought at all to the pain and suffering I might cause other people, or the world in which I live.

Furthermore, to accomplish my goals as rapidly as possible, with the least personal risk, I will work for a large global corporation, institution, or government that shares my values.

Turn on the television to the lame stream media and you will hear that capitalism no longer works, so we need to replace it with diverse government programs that will solve capitalism’s problems.

These pundits have a religious bias that they alone think that they can fix something broken, with something better in their own eyes. When in reality their solution is worse than the broken predecessor. Welcome to the world of ObamaCare.

Turn on Fox News and you will hear pundits say that the solution is to get back to the messiah-ship of Ronald Reagan and that the free markets of personal and corporate greed will solve all the problems that the progressive bureaucratic regulators are using to try to keep us all from getting rich by the principles of trickle down economics.

The fact of the matter, little money and virtually no real wealth trickles down to the folks, through either big government, or big business, or big labor. Furthermore if any of them can figure out a way to get some of the little they let go of, back, they will do that with as much conniving as possible.
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Tags: Declaration of Independence, capitalism, ObamaCare, God, Ronald Reagan, dry bones valley, tea party

There is a universal belief that with enough money life in short order will become a bed of roses, or some other silly metaphor. In that context the question now becomes, “Where’s the money?”

With more dollars floating around somewhere than in the entire history of the world, there should be money, money everywhere and inflation should be a significant worry. There is none of that. Furthermore everywhere you look for answers you don’t see or hear anything related to the present reality.

For an example in that present reality, last Thursday I took my Saturn into the Midas Muffler shop in downtown Spokane to have its brakes replaced. The reason I went there, on my previous trip to Spokane in my pickup, I had had to have the brakes replaced on it also. Not only was the pickup price about ten percent less than I figured it would have been up in Northeast Washington, I now had essentially a ten percent off coupon for my next visit to Midas. In times like these you save all the money you can.

By the time I got to the place, located on the corner of Division and Spokane Falls Boulevard, it was just a little before 10 AM, probably the busiest time of the business day. This address is just across the street from essentially the downtown core. The convention center and related theaters begin just on the opposite diagonal corner. There are at least five repair bays on the office side of the structure and about three on the other part of the L.

As I walked into the office I was met by a lady of about retirement age, and I stated I needed to get my brakes fixed and I need to know how long it will take. She says she will get an estimate, takes my keys, and walks out into the shop. There seems to be only one guy working out there and he seems to be just doing some make work activity. So working alone he finishes my estimate and tells me to come back in about an hour and a half. When I return at about 11:30 my car is ready, and it looks like the guy is doing something minor on another vehicle and there are no other business related cars either in the shop or in the parking lot. I pay my bill and I am on my way.

So on a normal business day in the center of Spokane, the largest city from Seattle to about Minneapolis, in a major national automobile repair franchise, they probably didn’t cover the overhead for the time I was there. What about the rest of the day, week, month, or year?
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Tags: money, Spokane, Malignant Enlightenment, Wall Street

Morning
My grace is sufficient for thee.
2 Corinthians 12:9

If none of God's saints were poor and tried, we should not know half so well the consolations of divine grace. When we find the wanderer who has not where to lay his head, who yet can say, "Still will I trust in the or, when we see the pauper starving on bread and water, who still glories in Jesus; when we see the bereaved widow overwhelmed in affliction, and yet having faith in Christ, oh! what honour it reflects on the gospel. God's grace is illustrated and magnified in the poverty and trials of believers. Saints bear up under every discouragement, believing that all things work together for their good, and that out of apparent evils a real blessing shall ultimately spring--that their God will either work a deliverance for them speedily, or most assuredly support them in the trouble, as long as He is pleased to keep them in it. This patience of the saints proves the power of divine grace. There is a lighthouse out at sea: it is a calm night--I cannot tell whether the edifice is firm; the tempest must rage about it, and then I shall know whether it will stand. So with the Spirit's work: if it were not on many occasions surrounded with tempestuous waters, we should not know that it was true and strong; if the winds did not blow upon it, we should not know how firm and secure it was. The master-works of God are those men who stand in the midst of difficulties, stedfast, unmoveable,--

Calm mid the bewildering cry,
Confident of victory.

He who would glorify his God must set his account upon meeting with many trials. No man can be illustrious before the Lord unless his conflicts be many. If then, yours be a much-tried path, rejoice in it, because you will the better show forth the all-sufficient grace of God. As for His failing you, never dream of it--hate the thought. The God who has been sufficient until now, should be trusted to the end.

Evening
They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house.
Psalm 36:8

Sheba's queen was amazed at the sumptuousness of Solomon's table. She lost all heart when she saw the provision of a single day; and she marvelled equally at the company of servants who were feasted at the royal board. But what is this to the hospitalities of the God of grace? Ten thousand thousand of his people are daily fed; hungry and thirsty, they bring large appetites with them to the banquet, but not one of them returns unsatisfied; there is enough for each, enough for all, enough for evermore. Though the host that feed at Jehovah's table is countless as the stars of heaven, yet each one has his portion of meat. Think how much grace one saint requires, so much that nothing but the Infinite could supply him for one day; and yet the Lord spreads His table, not for one, but many saints, not for one day, but for many years; not for many years only, but for generation after generation. Observe the full feasting spoken of in the text, the guests at mercy's banquet are satisfied, nay, more "abundantly satisfied;" and that not with ordinary fare, but with fatness, the peculiar fatness of God's own house; and such feasting is guaranteed by a faithful promise to all those children of men who put their trust under the shadow of Jehovah's wings. I once thought if I might but get the broken meat at God's back door of grace I should be satisfied; like the woman who said, "The dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table;" but no child of God is ever served with scraps and leavings; like Mephibosheth, they all eat from the king's own table. In matters of grace, we all have Benjamin's mess--we all have ten times more than we could have expected, and though our necessities are great, yet are we often amazed at the marvellous plenty of grace which God gives us experimentally to enjoy.