Daily Devotionals

Devotional: April 30th

"All her paths are peace." - Proverbs 3:17.

Can I trust thee, "Wisdom? Dost thou tell the whole truth? If I embrace this bold guarantee of thine, and commit myself to thy paths, is it certain that my course shall be one of uninterrupted and elevated peace?

" Walk in my paths, and God will be at peace with thee! What an infinite gain is this! Where thou now art, the wrath of God, the hostility of the Omnipotent impends over thee. Were all the hosts of the universe arrayed against thee, they would do thee the merest trifle of harm in comparison with what the Almighty by a single sweep of his hand could do thee. Destruction from him is not temporal, but eternal; not partial, but total. Were all the hosts of heaven, earth, and hell against thee, they could not make one hair of thy head perish, if God were on thy side. Walk in my path, and he is on thy side.’’

It must be of course, Wisdom, an infinite gain to have the Lord God on our side, and it seems to be certain that they who walk in thy path have him at peace with them. Nevertheless, I have heard, if I mistake not, that there are many afflictions to the righteous. Is it not thy path that is called a narrow path? Is it not said that men must take up their cross to walk therein? What is it that I have read about " persecutions, afflictions, reproaches, distresses?" Does not thy path go down sometimes into dungeons, and into dens of lions? Are not fires sometimes kindled to burn those that walk therein?

" Nevertheless, all my paths are peace. Were the things you have mentioned, expressive of the wrath of God, they would then militate against my declaration. But they who walk in my path are taught by me what peace truly is. They learn to find it in the sense of the favor of God, and in the assurance that all who love God, must love them, sooner or later. So with unvanquished peace, they bear their cross, pursue the narrow path, descend into dungeons, and meet death at the stake."

O Wisdom, pardon my tardy acquiescence. Some doubts yet linger. Tears ran down the cheeks of holy men of old, night and day, because of those who kept not God’s law. Will not our hearts bleed in thy paths, over the miseries of the unregenerate multitude? Will not the consciousness of evil in ourselves, war with our peace?

’ I say not that if you walk imperfectly in my ways, you shall have perfect peace. I will not show you the evil of your own heart, without showing you a fountain opened up for sin and for uncleanness; and I will not show you the miseries of the world without pointing out the all-adequate grace of God. I promise no immunity from tears in my earthly path; but consolation from a sublime source, and revelations of a divine sympathy which the believer will feel that it was better to have had than not to have needed."

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