If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
beautiful in heart.
"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all, and in you all. For
his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for your
captain.
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