Refuse to Look at Second Causes

This extract from ‘The man Who Believed God’ – a biography by Marshall Broomhall of Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China – offers great solace to those Christians who may find it hard to accept, without resentment, the trials and tribulations of life.

The secret of his (Hudson Taylor’s) rest of heart, amid such tempests of hate, was his refusal to look at second causes. His times were in God’s hands. He believed that it was with God, and God alone, he had to do. This is strikingly brought out in his article entitled ‘Blessed Adversity.’ With the experience of Job as his text, he wrote:

Oftentimes shall we be helped and blessed if we bear in mind that Satan is servant and not master, and that he and wicked men incited by him are only permitted to do that which God by his determinate council and fore-knowledge has before determined shall be done. Come joy or come sorrow, we may always take it from the hand of God.

Judas betrayed his Master with a kiss. Our Lord did not stop short at Judas, nor did He even stop short at the great enemy who filled the heart of Judas to do this thing; but He said: ‘The cup which my Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?’

How the tendency to resentment and a wrong feeling would be removed, could we take an injury from the hand of the loving Father, instead of looking at the agent through whom it comes to us!

It matters not who is the postman – it is with the writer of the letter that we are concerned; it matters not who is the messenger – it is with God that his children have to do.

Even Satan did not presume to ask God to be allowed himself to afflict Job. In the first chapter and the eleventh verse he says: ‘Put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse Thee to Thy face.’ Satan knew that none but God could touch Job; and when Satan was permitted to afflict him, Job was quite right in recognizing the Lord Himself as the doer of these things which He permitted to be done.

We conclude, therefore that Job was not mistaken, and that we shall not be mistaken if we follow his example, in accepting all God’s providential dealings as from Himself. We may be sure that they will ensue in ultimate blessings; because God is GOD and therefore, ‘all things work together for good to them that love Him.’

With peaceful mind your path of duty run: God nothing does, nor suffer to be done, but you would do the same if you should see the end of all events as He