May 21
Companions of the Way (Morning)Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant heights of Eden gleam, And did not dream it was a dream.
THE possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed—work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of to-morrow. In this despair, through which every worker for God and man must pass, many a warm heart has grown cold, many an intellect become paralyzed. There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiah's. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes to man are saving purposes. . . . So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith, as from beneath Isaiah's darkest verses that glorious passage suddenly bursts like uncontrollable spring from the very feet of winter. "For that day shall the spring of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped." That is all it is possible to say. There must be a future for man, because God loves him, and God reigns. That future can be reached only through judgment, because God is righteous.
GEORGE ADAM SMITH
REVELATION