“我们靠着圣灵，凭着信心，等候义的盼望。”（加5章5节，直译）

　　有时候，光景似乎非常黑暗——黑暗得连盼望都要等起来了。在盼望中等候已经够难了，何况等候盼望呢？一线光明也没有，却仍不肯绝望；窗前尽是黑暗，却仍开着窗等候星宿；心中有了空处，却不许装置污秽——这就是宇宙中最大的忍耐。这就是约伯在患难中，亚伯拉罕在往摩利亚去的路上，摩西在米甸的旷野，人子在客西马尼的那种忍耐。

　　“恒心忍耐，如同看见那不能看见的主。”（来11章27节）——这样的忍耐，比任何样的忍耐都难；这就是等候盼望。

　　主啊，给我你的力量——你客西马尼的力量。给我等候盼望的力量——叫我在没有星宿的黑夜，仍有力量守望窗外；在最大的欢乐失去了的时候，仍有力量站住。——马得胜(George Matcheson)

"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." (John 13:7.)

WE have only a partial view here of God's dealings, His half-completed, half-developed plan; but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity! Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest king, to the heights of Lebanon. See that noble cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler with northern blasts! Summer loves to smile upon it, night spangle its feathery foliage with dewdrops, the birds nestle on its branches, the weary pilgrim or wandering shepherd reposes under its shadows from the midday heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall; The aged denizen of the forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke!

As we see the axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk, then the noble limbs stripped of their branches, and at last the "Tree of God," as was its distinctive epithet, coming with a crash to the ground, we exclaim against the wanton destruction, the demolition of this proud pillar in the temple of nature. We are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem-invoking inanimate things to resent the affront- "Howl, fir tree; for the cedar has fallen!"

But wait a little. Follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side; thence conveyed in rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean; and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God. As you see its destination, placed in the very Holy of Holies, in the diadem of the Great King-say, can you grudge that "the crown of Lebanon" was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting?

That cedar stood as a stately prop in Nature's sanctuary, but "the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former!"

How many of our souls are like these cedars of old! God's axes of trial have stripped and bared them. We see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious, but He has a noble end and object in view; to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His Heavenly Zion; to make them a "crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God." --- Macduff.

"I do not ask my cross to understand.
My way to see-
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand,
And follow Thee."