The dictionary of the atheist?
(From Octavius Winslow's, "The Banquet")
We lose much blessing and God much honor,
by not more simply and implicitly living upon
His providential care.
Those who see God's goodness in all their temporal
supplies; who recognize His superintending and
molding hand, ordering and shaping all the events;
the most minute of their personal history; shall never
be left without some marked and unmistakable evidence
of God's care and bountifulness in providing for their
temporal needs, and His wisdom and faithfulness in
ordering and directing all their temporal concerns.
Be, then, a close student of God's providence.
Seek a dislodgment from your mind of that atheism
which would exclude God from the government of
the world, and from the events and circumstances
of our individual history.
The terms 'chance', 'accident', 'contingency', as they
are employed by the world in connection with the
events of human life, should be entirely expunged
from the Christian's vocabulary. They belong solely
to the dictionary of the atheist, and should
never
pass the lips of the believer.
It is the privilege of the believing mind, to see God's
hand in the most infinitesimal incident of individual life.
Tossed amid the waves of second causes, faith often
loses its anchorage on God in dark and mysterious
calamities; and the believing and devout mind, thus
for the moment loosed from its divine fastening, drifts
away amid the breakers and the shoals of doubt and
perplexity; and but for the restraining power and the
restoring grace of the Divine Shepherd would become
an utter wreck.