“Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
”
Where an evil thing is invented to explain and account for a good thing, and a lover of God is called upon to believe the invention or be cast out, he need not mind being cast out, for it is into the company of Jesus. Where there is no ground to believe that God does a thing except that men who would explain God have believed and taught it, he is not a true man who accepts men against his own conscience of God. I acknowledge no authority calling upon me to believe a thing of God which I could not believe right in my fellow man. If you say, that may be right of God to do which it would not be right of man to do, I answer, yes, because the relation of the maker to his creatures is very different from the relation of those creatures to each other, and he has therefore duties toward his creatures requiring of him what no man would have the right to do to his fellow man; but he can have no duty that is not both just and merciful. More is required of the maker, by his own act of creation, than can be required of men. More and higher justice and righteousness is required of him by himself; greater nobleness, more penetrating sympathy, and nothing but what, if an honest man understood it, he would say was right. If it be a thing man cannot understand, then man can say nothing as to whether it is right or wrong. He cannot even know that God does it, when the it is unintelligble to him. What he calls it may be but the smallest facet of a composite action. His part is silence.
Commentary
by Dale Darling
We could use more silence regarding rights. Right, what is correct, true, is too often
based on the opinion of the day, the cycle, the age, the nation, the race, the - who knows. Ah, yes! On the Self, the common bond of slavery to the world shared by the unrepentant and those who refuse to obey Spirit, living in the flesh.
"To trust opinion," writes MacDonald "as if it were truth, is grievously to wrong the
truth." To wrong Jesus, indeed. In thought and in deed.
He promised, "For I will give you a mouth and wisdom," after directing His own, "Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer." Luke 21: 14+ This as advice, behavior, faith when we are persecuted, delivered up before kings and rulers, "for My sake."
I presume the delivery boys will be obeying those that claim to mete justice on behalf of the wronged of society.
Our past, in wisdom, is silence in defense of self, Truth in Jesus.