Auguste Sabatier: Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion, 2me éd., 1897, pp. 24–26, abridged. ↩
My authority for these statistics is the little work on Müller, by Frederic G. Warne, New York, 1898. ↩
The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, New American edition, N.Y., Crowell, pp. 228, 194, 219. ↩
The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, New American edition, N.Y., Crowell, p. 126. ↩
The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, New American edition, N.Y., Crowell, p. 383, abridged. ↩
The Life of Trust; Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, New American edition, N.Y., Crowell, p. 323. ↩
I cannot resist the temptation of quoting an expression of an even more primitive style of religious thought, which I find in Arber’s English Garland, vol. VII p. 440. Robert Lyde, an English sailor, along with an English boy, being prisoners on a French ship in 1689, set upon the crew, of seven Frenchmen, killed two, made the other five prisoners, and brought home the ship. Lyde thus describes how in this feat he found his God a very present help in time of trouble:—
“With the assistance of God I kept my feet when they three and one more did strive to throw me down. Feeling the Frenchman which hung about my middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, ‘Go round the binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.’ So the boy did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall. … Then I looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them withal. But seeing nothing, I said, ‘Lord! what shall I do?’ Then casting up my eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, I jerked my right arm and took hold, and struck the point four times about a quarter of an inch deep into the skull of that man that had hold of my left arm. [One of the Frenchmen then hauled the marlin spike away from him.] But through God’s wonderful providence! it either fell out of his hand, or else he threw it down, and at this time the Almighty God gave me strength enough to take one man in one hand, and throw at the other’s head: and looking about again to see anything to strike them withal, but seeing nothing, I said, ‘Lord! what shall I do now?’ And then it pleased God to put me in mind of my knife in my pocket. And although two of the men had hold of my right arm, yet God Almighty strengthened me so that I put my right hand into my right pocket, drew out the knife and sheath, … put it between my legs and drew it out, and then cut the man’s throat with it that had his back to my breast: and he immediately dropt down, and scarce ever stirred after.”
—I have slightly abridged Lyde’s narrative. ↩
As, for instance, In Answer to Prayer, by the Bishop of Ripon and others, London, 1898; Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer, Harrisburg, Pa., 1898 (?); H. L. Hastings: The Guiding Hand, or Providential Direction, Illustrated by Authentic Instances, Boston, 1898 (?). ↩
C. Hilty: Glück, Dritter Theil, 1900, pp. 92 ff. ↩
“Good Heaven!” says Epictetus, “any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence, to a humble and grateful mind. The mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from milk, and wool from skins; who formed and planned it? Ought we not, whether we dig or plough or eat, to sing this hymn to God? Great is God, who has supplied us with these instruments to till the ground; great is God, who has given us hands and instruments of digestion; who has given us to grow insensibly and to breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever to celebrate. … But because the most of you are blind and insensible, there must be someone to fill this station, and lead, in behalf of all men, the hymn to God; for what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature, it is my duty to praise God … and I call on you to join the same song.”
Works, book I ch. XVI, Carter-Higginson translation, abridged
James Martineau: end of the sermon “Help Thou Mine Unbelief,” in Endeavours After a Christian Life, 2nd series. Compare with this page the extract from Voysey here, and those from Pascal and Madame Guyon here. ↩
Father Gratry: Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse, 1897, p. 122. ↩
Father Gratry: Souvenirs de ma Jeunesse, Letter XXX. ↩
See here onwards. Compare the withdrawal of expression from the world, in Melancholiacs, here. ↩
A friend of mine, a first-rate psychologist, who is a subject of graphic automatism, tells me that the appearance of independent actuation in the movements of his arm, when he writes automatically, is so distinct that it obliges him to abandon a psycho-physical theory which he had previously believed in, the theory, namely, that we have no feeling of the discharge downwards of our voluntary
