There is no fear in trust: the two are opposites. When we really fear, we are not fully trusting. When we trust, fear gives way to assurance. Fear is tormenting. How many there are who are constantly agitated by fear! They fear the devil, trials, temptations, the wind, lightning, burglars, and a thousand other things. Their days are haunted by fear of this thing or that. Their peace is marred and their hearts are troubled. For all this, trust is the cure. I do not mean to say that if you trust, nothing will ever startle you or frighten you, or that you will never feel physical fear in time of danger; but in such times trust will bring to us a consciousness that the Lord knows and cares, and that his helping presence is with us.

There is no worry in trust. When we worry about anything, we have not committed it to God. Trust takes away the anxiety. So many people use up a large portion of their energy in worry. There is always something troubling them. Their days and nights are full of anxiety. Worrying becomes a fixed habit with them. Peace and calmness and assurance find but little room in their lives. The cure for all this is trust. Trust brings confidence. Trust whispers to our souls that there is no cause to worry. It tells us that God holds the helm of our vessel. It bids us to be of good courage, assuring us that God is our refuge and strength, that our lives and all are in his hands, and that he will work out for us the things that are best.

There is no murmuring in trust. When all is trusted into God's hands, it brings to us a feeling of satisfaction concerning God's dealings with us. We can sing from our hearts, “God's way is best; I will not murmur.” When we trust, it is easy to praise. When we trust, the heart is full of thankful appreciation. If you are inclined to murmur, it is because you do not trust.

There is no feeling of bitterness when things do not go as we think they should, if we are trusting. Bitterness comes from rebellion, and there is no rebellion in trust. Trust can always say, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

In trust there is peace, the peace of God which passeth understanding. There is calm in the soul of him who trusts. There is no doubt in trust, for doubt is swallowed up in assurance, and assurance brings calmness and peace.

I have told you something about trust, but I now wish to speak of some other things that belong to trust. Trust implies submission. Very often God fails to do things for us because we do not permit him to. We want to plan for ourselves. We want things to be done in the way that seems best to our finite wisdom.

Too many of us are like a woman whose husband recently said that they had often gone driving together, that their horse would sometimes become frightened, and that when it did, his wife would also become frightened and would almost invariably seize the lines. Thus, he would have to manage both his wife and the horse, making his task doubly difficult.

How many of us are just like that woman! When anything threatens, we become alarmed and try to help God. We feel that it is not safe to leave all in his hands and let him manage the circumstances. Our failure to submit to him often complicates matters, and it is harder for him to manage us than it is to manage the difficulties. To trust God means to keep our hands off the lines. It means to let him have his way and do things as he thinks best. It may be a hard lesson to learn, but you will hinder God until you learn it.

Trust also implies obedience. It means working with God to produce the results. We can not sit down and fold our hands in idleness and expect things to work themselves out. We must be workers, not shirkers. The man who prays for a bountiful harvest but prepares no ground and plants no seed will pray in vain. Faith and works must go together. We must permit God to direct our efforts and command our efforts. We must be willing to work when he wants us to work and in the way he wants us to work. Our attempts to trust will amount to nothing if we are not willing to obey. Right here is the secret of many people's trouble; they are willing to obey so long as the thing commanded is what they themselves would choose, but when it is otherwise they are not so ready. Our obedience must be full and willing, or we can not trust.

A brother once came to the altar in a meeting I helped to hold. In telling his trouble he said, “When I want anything done, it has to be done in a hurry.” Many other people can not be patient and wait. They want it now. This is a great hindrance to their faith. The Psalmist says, “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him” (Psa. 37: 7). We are not only to wait patiently for him to work out his purpose, but we are at the same time to rest in him. Some people can wait, but they can not rest at the same time. They are uneasy and impatient; they want to hurry the Lord all the time. The result usually is that their faith does not last very long. You must add patience to your faith to make it effective. If you really trust, you can be patient. It may not always be easy, but the more perfect your trust, the easier it will be to be patient.

But trusting God is an active, positive thing. A passive submission or surrender to circumstances is not trust. Trusting the Lord to save us means to definitely rely on him to do it; to confidently expect that he will do it. This leads directly to the confident trust that he does do it. It brings the conscious assurance that it is an accomplished fact. We are not left to doubt, to hope, or to guess; but we have a positive trust that brings a positive result.

The same is true of sanctification. A positive faith brings a positive experience; and so long as our faith remains positive, the experience remains positive. It is only when faith begins to waver and doubts appear that the experience becomes uncertain. If you will maintain a positive faith, God will take care of your experience. Here lies the secret of continuous victory. There may be conflicts, but faith is the foundation of sure victory.

It is safe to trust in the Lord. Isaiah says, “I will trust and not be afraid” (Isa. 12: 2). That is the way God wants us to trust. He would have us be confident in him. But sometimes we get to looking at circumstances, and they loom up so threateningly before us that in spite of ourselves we tremble and shrink before them. We believe that God will take care of us and help us, but we can not quiet our fears. Our feelings are very much as they are when we stand just outside the bars of the cage of a ferocious wild beast. We know it can not reach us; we know we are safe from those powerful teeth and claws; but still we can not help having a feeling that we should not have were we somewhere else. When he comes to our side of the cage, we shrink involuntarily, but still we trust the iron bars and do not run away.

The Psalmist tells us what to do when we have such fears. “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee” (Psa. 56: 3). Still keep trusting. God will not chide you for the fears you can not help, but only for those that come from unbelief. Trust in God. It is the safest thing you have ever done; and he will never fail you.

Dissatisfaction is the mother of progress. The Chinese for centuries have been taught to be satisfied with having things like their fathers had. As a consequence they have almost entirely lost the inventive faculty. Long ago they were an inventive nation, but now an invention among them is a rarity. As long as people are satisfied, they are content to remain as they are. Satisfaction is the foe to progress. As long as you are fully satisfied, you are like a sailing-vessel in a dead calm. The sea about you may be very smooth. Everything may be very peaceful and serene. But all the time this calm prevails you are getting nowhere; you are at a standstill. It is only when the wind rises and the swells begin to move the vessel up and down and the sails begin to strain that good progress begins. You may feel very comfortable in your satisfaction. It may be very delightful and dreamy, but it may be dangerous also. Those who are fully satisfied for very long may be sure that there is need for an investigation. It is only when we become dissatisfied with present conditions and attainments that we are spurred to effectual effort to make progress.

Suppose God had been satisfied with the world-conditions before Christ came. We should now have no Savior and no salvation. He was dissatisfied, thoroughly dissatisfied, and so he made the greatest sacrifice that he could make to change existing conditions. Paul was once very well satisfied with his place in the Jewish religion; he was not looking for anything better. His dissatisfaction arose from the fact that some other people were not satisfied thus but were finding and advocating something different. This aroused his severest condemnation. What he had was good enough for him and ought to be good enough for them.

There are many today who are just like Paul was. They are fully contented in their present situation, and should any one try to show them its insufficiency and the need of higher attainment, it would only arouse their opposition and indignation. That is why so many people oppose holiness. Just as soon as Paul saw Christ and the higher and better things for which Christ stood, he suddenly lost his satisfaction and became an earnest seeker for those better things. Sometimes it takes a rude shock to break through our self-satisfaction and to show us our true needs; but when it comes and arouses a dissatisfaction, it is truly a blessing.

Suppose Luther had been satisfied to continue in the Romish church, approving and submitting to her teachings and practices. Where might the world have been today? He became dissatisfied and gave voice to that dissatisfaction. Others heard and became dissatisfied. This dissatisfaction made their hearts hungry for God, and out of that heart-hunger came the Reformation.

Dissatisfaction has brought us the multitude of new things which we have to use and enjoy. It has been because men became dissatisfied with old methods and old implements and old ideas and customs and old attainments that they have toiled in painful research, that they have labored night and day to invent new things. In some places, people still plow with a crooked stick and grind their flour in hand-mills. What their fathers had is good enough for them. Some people are like that about religion. What their fathers had is good enough for them, and they are indignant if we even suggest something better; they are satisfied. There are others who sought and obtained a real experience of forgiveness, but right there they stopped. Years have passed. They were satisfied when they were first saved (which was a very good thing); the only trouble was that they remained satisfied and never made any further progress. They hear entire sanctification preached, they accept the doctrine intellectually, but they can never be persuaded to press on into the experience themselves. They go on from year to year to year and never make any real spiritual advancement. What is the trouble? Oh, they are just satisfied, that is all; and they will never get any further till their sleepy satisfaction is rudely broken in upon by something that startles them out of their security and awakens them to their needs. That will bring dissatisfaction and that in time will set them to seeking to have those needs supplied.

There are those who know that they are less spiritual than they used to be; still, they are not much concerned about it. They are resting very easy. Such satisfaction is a curse. What such folks need is a good case of dissatisfaction; for that is the only thing that will keep them from drying up and withering away. I know of people who once had a glorious experience but who for years have been so satisfied with themselves that they have not progressed an inch. Instead, they have gone backwards, with the result that today they are cold and formal. They are still satisfied, they still profess to be justified and sanctified, but they amount to practically nothing for God or the church. There is no moral force radiating from their lives. To such persons the coming of dissatisfaction would be a great blessing. So long as they are satisfied with their present condition, so long they will be cold formalists.

Some people know that they are coming short both of their duty and of their privileges in the Lord, but in spite of this they seem content and are making no effort—at least no effective effort—to do better. O brother, sister, if you are satisfied where you ought to be dissatisfied, it is time you awakened, it is time you looked toward better things until your hunger for them stirred you to action to obtain them.

Dissatisfaction is never welcome, but it is a true friend. Through it you may reach blessed attainments and soul-enriching grace. Value it and use it rightly, and it will prove a great blessing, though it may often be a blessing in disguise.

The Most Loved of All Books.

The educated and the ignorant, the high and the low, all races in all climes, when they learn to truly know the Bible, and when they submit themselves to the God of the Bible, learn to love it and to delight in it and are enriched and blessed by it; and because I too feel this deep love in my heart for the old Book, I believe it. I believe that, in some way, it was made for me by One who knew my needs, and that it corresponds to the very essence of my inner self; and I believe that I could not love it as I do if it were not God's book and if it were not true.

The Most Hated of All Books.

It is judged by a standard far more stringent than any other book, not excepting the other sacred books. No critic would think of treating any other book as he treats the Bible, nor of requiring of any other book what he requires of the Bible. The more men hate God, the more they hate his Word; and this has a deep, underlying reason, and that reason, I believe, is that the Bible is God's book and that in it there is so much of God himself.

It Has Withstood All Assaults.

It Tells Me of Myself.

My deepest emotions and longings, my highest thoughts and hopes, are mirrored there, and the more settled inner workings of conscience are there recorded. It speaks to me of my secret ambitions, of my dearest hopes, of my fears, of the love that burns within me. My desires are pictured in the Book just as I find them working in my heart. Whatever picture it draws of the human soul I find within myself, and whatever I find within myself I find within its pages, and thus I know that it is true. No man can know me as the Bible knows me nor picture out my inner self as the Bible pictures me; and since no work of man could correspond with my inner self as the Bible corresponds with me, I know that it did not come from man.

It Is the Book of Conscience.

It Gives Comfort and Hope.

To what book do those in sorrow turn? To Voltaire? to Ingersoll? to Haeckel? Do they turn to science or philosophy or poetry or fiction? There is but one book that is the book of comfort. The sad and desolate heart turns to its pages, and as it reads, the consolation of the Holy Spirit, which fills the book, comes into that heart, and it is comforted. It is as the balm of Gilead; it is as a letter from home to the wanderer; it is as a mother's voice to the child. Friends may speak words to comfort us, but they can not comfort us as does the Book; its words seem to enter into our innermost sorrows with a healing touch. God is the God of all comfort, and it is the comforting God in this comforting book that comforts the soul.

It is also the book of hope. Sometimes man despairs, and he looks here and there for hope, finding none; but there is one book in which hope may always be found. It always has something to offer him to inspire hope with new courage. Therefore it is the hope of the hopeless; since in the troubled soul it brings a calm, brightening dull eyes and causing them to look beyond. It lifts up the bowed head, strengthens the feeble knees, renews the courage, and takes the sadness out of the voice; it is therefore truly the book of hope.

The Book of the Dying.

For what book do the dying call? For just any book? What words do they wish to hear in the final hour? There is but one book for that hour; but one that can throw light into that shadowy valley. That is the Bible. It is the book of the living and of the dying, the book of the sorrowing and of the hopeless. It is just such a book as the loving Father would give to the children whom he loves, and it meets their need in all the details of their lives as only God could meet it, and therefore I can but believe that it is the book of God.

Only Answer to the Enigma of Life.

The Bible outlives all its critics and is triumphant when they are forgotten; it has many times been pronounced dead, but still it lives; it has been called “exploded,” but its power is not dissipated; it has seen all antagonistic theories of the past, one by one, destroyed and rejected, but it still stands in spite of the critics, in spite of its enemies; and those who anchor their faith upon it need not fear what voice is raised against it. Neither need they fear what weapons are brought to bear upon it; for it is truth, and those who fight against it fight against God and are themselves ruined.

It is adapted to all people of every race and clime, to the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant. Of no other book can this be said. It is the Book of books, the book of God. In it God speaks, and my inmost heart knows that it is the voice of my Beloved, and leaps for joy.

Though he sometimes may needs lead by a rugged way, yet I am safe, for he careth for me. He will lead me in the way that I should go. He will enrich my soul with his goodness. Yea, “goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”