would show forth their thankfulness not only with their lips, but in
their lives. You who believe--you who say--that Christ has cured
your sicknesses, show your faith by your works. Live like those who
are alive again from the dead; who are not your own, but bought with
a price, and bound to work for God with your bodies and your spirits,
which are His--then, and then only, can either God or man believe
you.

Again: There is a third reason which makes one suspect that people
do not mean what they say about this matter. I think too many say,
"It has pleased God," merely as an empty form of words, when all they
mean is, "What must be, must, and it cannot be helped." Else, why do
they say, "It has pleased the Lord to send me sickness?" What is the
use of saying, "It has pleased the Lord to cure me," when you say in
the same breath, "It has pleased the Lord to make me ill?" I know
you will say that, "Of course, whatever happens must be the Lord's
will; if it did not please Him it would not happen." I do not care
for such words; I will have nothing to do with them. I will neither
entangle you nor myself in those endless disputings and questions
about freewill and necessity, which never yet have come to any
conclusion, and never will, because they are too deep for poor short-
sighted human beings like us. "To the law and to the testimony," say
I. I will hold to the words of the Bible; what it says, I will say;
what it does not say I will not say, to please any man's system of
doctrines. And I say from the Bible that we have no more right to
say, "It has pleased the Lord to make me sick," than, "It has pleased
the Lord to make me a sinner." Scripture everywhere speaks of
sickness as a real evil and a curse--a breaking of the health, and
order, and strength, and harmony of God's creation. It speaks of
madmen as possessed with evil spirits; did THAT please God? The