Galatians 2:20-21 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me… I know very little about God. The sum of my knowledge is this: I do believe in the Divine Being. My soul says, "Certainly there is a God"; and it says that God is paternal; and that the Divine government is a family government, and not a magisterial nor monarchical government; and that it is a personal government, generated in love, carried out in love, and to be consummated in love; and that behind the blackness, the tear, the pang, the wrong and the sin, there is to be evolved in the eternal ages the triumph of love. For everybody? I cannot measure. All I know is this: if there be one soul that at last comes short of eternal life, it will be because that soul has stood up in the very tropical atmosphere of Divine love, and that love has poured itself upon that soul without obstruction, and it was absolutely immedicable and unhealable. Only those will be lost whom love could not save; and if you are lost, it will not be because you missed a narrow switch, and just did not come out right; nor because you run off the track by being moved one-tenth part of an inch in the wrong direction; nor because you made mistakes in your faith; nor because you were unfortunate; nor because you did not do this, that, or the other thing which the churches prescribe; nor because you did not believe this, that, or the other doctrine held by the churches. You will never be God's castaway until rivers of infinite love have been poured on you. And then, if you are not changed, ought you not to be a castaway? What those steps are, or how they are to be taken, I know not. Only this I know: love is a fact; and the Divine administration of love is a truth; and the ages are God's. And I have more faith in what; Love will think it best to do, than in what theologians think it is best to do; and I believe God will take this great sinning, sorrowing, blood-shedding world up into His arms, and comfort it as a mother comforts her sorrowing children. And I believe that sighing shall flee away, that God will wipe all tears from men's eyes, and that all the sorrows which have made the earth wretched in days gone by, He will, in His own way, and according to His own good pleasure, medicate; so that at last the universal Father, with the universal household, shall sit central in the universe, God over all, blessed and blessing for evermore. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. |
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