Re: Help finding Madeleine McCann - 4 years old
Find Maddie
defiled by it; and the sin which she brought into the world with her,
was alone sufficient to condemn her.
On the Sabbath-day she was so ill, that her friends thought it best that
she should not go to public worship, of which she seemed very desirous:
but when she went to bed on the Sabbath night, she took up a resolution,
that she would the next morning go to the minister, hoping to find some
relief there. As she awakened on Monday morning, a little before day,
she wondered within herself at the easiness and calmness she felt in her
mind, which was of that kind she never felt before. As she thought of
this, such words as these were in her mind: The words of the Lord are
pure words, health to the soul, and marrow to the bones: and then these
words, The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin; which were accompanied
with a lively sense of the excellency of Christ, and His sufficiency to
satisfy for the sins of the whole world. She then thought of that
expression, It is a
Find Maddie
reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and
subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned
and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and
all conditions.
A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should certainly convince us
of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts. But example teaches
us little. No resemblance is ever so perfect that there is not some slight
difference; and hence we expect that our hope will not be deceived on this
occasion as before. And thus, while the present never satisfies us,
experience dupes us and, from misfortune to misfortune, leads us to death,
their eternal crown.
What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but
that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him
only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his
surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in
things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can
only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by
God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is
a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been
serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the
elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents,
fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has
lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own
destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of
nature.
Some seek good in authority, others in scientific research, others in
pleasure. Others, who are