"God's Will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not so to look ahead as to be distrustful. I fear that I have no right feelings in this state of suspense. It is easier to say 'Thy will be done' than at all tunes to feel it, yet I can pray that God's will may be done whatever ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... God's will she went— Times thought she work'd too slavin'— And for the young one that was sent, I took to steady savin'. Jest cast your eye on that thar hill The sugar bush just tetches, And round by Miller Jackson's mill, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... but what is good; He ordains no one to sin; He is the instigator of no evil at all. All the sin and moral evil of the world have come from our own evil choices and purposes. "The thing which hinders and has always hindered is that our wills are different from God's will. God never seeks Himself in His willing—we do. There is no other way to blessedness than to lose one's self-will."[19] "He who surrenders his selfishness," he says in another treatise, "and uses the freedom which God has given ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... not; but think of all that before you preach to me. But I do love her; and it is because I love her that I would fain see her removed from the reproaches which her own madness will bring upon her. Let her die;—if it be God's will. I can follow her without one wish for a prolonged life. Then will a noble family be again established, and her sorrowful tale will be told among the Lovels with a tear ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... him your second best one. And you kneel down on your soft hassocks and pray all your enormous, needless wealth away from you, for you pray, 'Thy kingdom come,' which you know is the kingdom of love and equality and justice, and 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,' when you know that God's will is mercy, pity and love. And 'Give us our daily bread,' when you must know that you are takin' it right out of the mouths of the poor when you are makin' your big corners on wheat and meat, and freezin' the widder and orphan when you make ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... within the true meaning of the old statute of Edward III., on which he was indicted, the peers were base enough to pronounce an unanimous verdict of Guilty; which he received, as his father had done before him, with the words "God's will be done!" But here the queen felt herself concerned in honor to interpose. It had ever been her maxim and her boast, to punish none capitally for religious delinquencies unconnected with traitorous designs; and sensible probably how imperfectly in this case the latter had been proved, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... might wonder and mark "Today is a day of days," they said, "Make merry, O People, all!" And the Ploughman listened and bowed his head: "Today and tomorrow God's will," he said, As he trimmed ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... than as so many inns, whereof the traveler that hath lodged in the best or the worst findeth no difference when he cometh to his journey's end; and I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit myself to God's will and yours, and, with your leave, do dedicate myself (laying by all desire of other employments whatsoever) to the service of God and the company herein, with the whole endeavors both of ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the result of my silent labors. On every page you will find a cry of distress, a sigh from thousands who have been blind enough to think it God's will that they should suffer the tyranny of one man—who have thought it their duty not even to hope for liberation. (Olof takes the volume and begins to read.) You shall hear complaints all the way from ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... died on the Cross for us, Frederick?" He rambled for a moment or two, and then, as the meaning of my question flashed upon him, spoke out in clear accents "Jesus Christ." Very little longer was he to live. We had prayed earnestly, constantly, for his recovery, but it was not God's will. On Saturday evening, after prayers, I perceived that he was sinking, and told the boys who were watching him that I did not think he would live through the night. He was breathing heavily and quickly. He would take no notice when spoken ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... spectacle of the pains of death is gone by; the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No need now to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not feel them. She died in a time of promise. We saw her taken from life in its prime. But it is God's will, and the place where she is gone is better ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... "I think it's God's will that I learn to ride this bicycle. Think of an old lady like me on a bicycle!" said Mary. "The new road makes it easy to ride, and I'm running up and down and taking a new work in a village two miles off. It has done me all the good in the ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann
... together with some of the children who have fled here, and who, too, could not support such a life. It may be that when the fierce Danes arrive and find nought but children and aged men even their savage breasts may be moved to pity; but if not, God's will be done. The younger brethren will seek refuge in the fens, and will carry with them the sacred relics of the monastery. The most holy body of St. Guthlac with his scourge and psalmistry, together with the most valuable jewels and muniments, ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... was the same Church darkened and decayed! Where was that Church then, when "all flesh upon earth had denied their own way?" Where was it, when amongst the number of the whole world there were only eight persons (and they neither all chaste and good) whom God's will was should be saved alive from that universal destruction and mortality? when Elie the prophet so lamentably and bitterly made moan, that "only himself was left" of all the whole world which did truly and duly worship God? and ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of his holy word." And then how justly the good preacher rebukes those who close their souls to truth! "The Lutherans, for example, cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, and whatever part of God's will he hath further imparted to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace, and so the Calvinists stick where he left them. This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were precious, shining lights in their times, God hath not revealed his whole ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in a vexed amaze, "Our brethren we must aid, if 'tis God's will; But the wild creatures of the forest ways Himself God heals with His Almighty skill. And charity is good, and love—but still God shall not look in vain for the white prayers We send on silver feet to climb the ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... made some true friends, and one of them will be here very shortly. Dr. Classen is just now completing his last business in Frankfurt. He intends to take your advice and live here. He has never felt so happy as with you and Heidi. The child will have two protectors near her, and I hope with God's will, that they may be ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... give in parallel columns nine scriptures, describing man raised to the plane of justification, and nine describing the state of the wholly sanctified. Also a few texts expressing God's will to the sinner, and parallel texts to the justified. And in conclusion a few texts showing the provisions God has made for the justification of the sinner and the sanctification ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... spring. Nature may yet make your great Father kind; And who can tell but he may change his mind, When your Succession shall be understood To be the Peoples Choice, and for the Nations Good? But let us leave what is to come, to Fate; Yours Father's pleasure and God's will await. Long may it be ere the King's life doth end; On it our Peace and Happiness depend. Like Wheat full ripe, with many years bow'd down, Let him leave this for an immortal Crown. And who can tell Heav'n's will? it may be too, Eliakim may die before the King ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... and the causes which produce it and preserve it in human minds are among the most horrible and tremendous of facts; and it is the imperishable glory of the prophets, that, whatever the priest the king, the Sadducee or Pharisee might do, they could not rest in or abide the idea that God's will was ever evil; no inconsistency was too glaring to check their indignation at Eastern fatalism which quietly supposed that as things went wrong it was their nature to do so;—vanity, vanity, all is vanity!—or that if men did wrong and prospered, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of her who hath departed, and Who came to warn me of my error here. Then in a future day I shall ascend, And share beside her an eternal joy." Again he thought, "But can the babe be dead? It which should be my only comfort now. But now I cannot murmur; I will say, 'God's will be done!' He knoweth what is good." In manner thus he pondered full and deep, Until the hall he reached, then entered in. And all the household wondered whence he came, For that their lord had been the night away, But none could ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... began to measure his own life by these words. And he thought to himself, "Is my house built on the rock or on the sand? How good to be as on a rock! How easy it all seems to thee sitting alone here. It seems as if thou wert doing God's will to the full, and so thou takest no heed and fallest away again. And yet thou wouldst go on striving, for so it is good for thee. O Lord, help me!" Thus thought he, and would have laid him down, but it was a grief to tear ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... "It is God's will, and we must bow to His judgment," continued the injured man. "But I want to talk to you about what to do when ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... 'That's God's will! I can see they have more sense than I have, but when it comes to holding on, there I can match them! Look at all the woodpeckers on that little tree; that tree is like us peasants. The squire sits and hammers, the parish sits and hammers, the Jews and the Germans sit and hammer, yet in the end they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... woman had already perished that day, a victim to the superstition of the times, Magdalena, who, during his praise of the fair girl, had again looked at him with awakened interest, disengaged herself from the other. "God's will be done!" she said with humility. "I am prepared for all. But thou, unhappy man!" she continued, "beware in turn, lest, before thou hast time to repent thee of the hardness and cruelty of thy heart, His judgement fall on thee, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... very bad attack of ophthalmia, and sat all of a heap, groaning all day and night, and protesting 'I am a Muslim,' equivalent to 'God's will be done.' At one place I was known, and had a lot of sick to see, and a civil man killed a sheep and regaled us all with meat and fateereh. The part of the river in which we were kept by the high wind is made cheerful by the custom ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... right thing for me—if it is God's will—yes! it will come, and meanwhile I am very happy. It is good of Him to have given me such a hope in my life," said Bridgie simply; and Mademoiselle's eyes dimmed with sudden tears. Her own nervous, restless ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... been my disadvantage—I began to think over things too late. We mustn't grumble, they say, for one thing has naturally grown out of another, big things out of little, and all together depends on God's will. According to that our vermin must finally become thorough-bred horse for the rich—and God knows I believe that is possible! They have begun by sucking the blood of poverty—but only see how they prance in front of the carriage! Ah, yes—how will ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Camboja that a galleon which I am having built there at your Majesty's account has been already launched. No one thought that this would be accomplished; but it has been God's will that the difficulties should be conquered at last, and that this shipbuilding should be established in a place where this ship has been built at much less cost, and from more durable woods, than [it could have been] in these islands. As ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... at twelve o'clock on that day. When they saw that he was entering the port, they sailed out to attack him with their boats (which were, as I said, twenty or thirty in number), and with a great outcry began to fire their culverins and many arrows. It was God's will that they caused no injury to our forces. Taking note of the order used by the enemy, the command was given for the Spaniards to fasten their boats by twos, and to row slowly toward the opposing forces. When they were in close proximity, all the arquebusiers began ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... divisions don't deter any but Chocolates from executing God's Will. When someone says there's a lion in the way, the real Christian promptly replies, "That's hardly enough inducement for me; I want a bear or two besides to make it worth my ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... him over in silence," says a dusty chronicler, "that glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue, and the lovely joy of all the learned sort. It was God's will that he should be born into the world, even to show unto our age a sample of ancient virtue." The descendant of an ancient Norman race, and allied to many of the proudest nobles in England, Sidney himself was but a commoner, a private individual, a soldier ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... piety independent of these is not enough; it lacks its final consequence, its praiseworthy completion or "satisfaction,"[5334] the positive act by which we atone for our sins to God and demonstrate our obedience to the Church.[5335] It is the Church, the living interpreter of God's will, which prescribes these rites; she is then the mistress of these and not the servant; she is empowered to adapt their details and forms to necessities and circumstances, to lighten or simplify them according to time and place, to establish ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 'It may be. Mother and I don't deceive ourselves, though it is no use dwelling upon terrible possibilities. But even then, don't you see the difference? We should feel that we had done our best, and—and that more was not God's will.' ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... life. When she came to herself, pitying friends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say, God save the King!" The poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed, sir, she has said it." "Will she take the abjuration?" he demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And the waters closed over her for the last ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to, honestly turned from the wrong to the right, which is the same as to say that he was a moral agent in his conversion. A man may turn without a knowledge of the right and the wrong, but it is turning round and round and remaining in the same place, i.e. in ignorance of God's will, and so remaining in disobedience. Such may be and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... freshened breeze shook the tasseled pine above her head and kissed the bands of rich brown hair, from which her hat had fallen. She did not heed the lapse of time in the earnest prayer she breathed for entire submission to God's will, nor did she hear the footstep coming up the pathway to the ledge where she was sitting, the footstep which paused at intervals, as if the comer were weary, or else in quest of some one, but which at last came ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... of earth; and he had so long contemplated Rome under the celestial aspects of his faith, that, though the shock of his first confession there had been painful, still it was insufficient to shake his faith. It had been God's will, he thought, that where he looked for aid he should meet only confusion, and he bowed to the inscrutable will, and blindly adored the mysterious revelation. If such could be the submission and the faith of a strong and experienced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... more about my external position than about the mountains in the moon; I know God's will will be done, in spite of them all, and to my greatest benefit. What that is He alone knows. Only one thing I think I see clearly. My whole life is without sense and lasting use, if I squander ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... I will tell you about Mr. Vernon. When he was quite a young man, rich, handsome, and surrounded with friends, he was taken ill with a dreadful fever, which left him totally blind. For a long, long time he murmured at God's will, and refused to believe there was any thing left worth living for; but God's ways are not our ways, and in His own good time He so softened the wilful heart of the blind man, so that he became ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... I wish to settle is merely, by what method shall I ascertain what I am fit for, as preliminary to ascertaining God's will with reference to me; or what my inclinations are, as preliminary to ascertaining what my capacities are, that is, what I am fit for. I am more than all perplexed by this fact, that the prime inclination, that is, natural bent (which I have checked, though) ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... be ready? Simple as A B C, fellows. Just be busy, doing God's will—or making an honest effort to do it, and asking Him to help. Anybody can be ready to meet Him when He comes, if he wants to and will try. Just be doing your work and playing your play, as He would have you ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... thy nest Amid the fading flowers, The while we strive to learn the words: 'God's will be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... men—Israelites without guile—do not, in fact, expect the advent of any Messiah; but believe, or suggest, that it may possibly have been God's will and meaning, that the Jews should remain a quiet light among the nations for the purpose of pointing at the doctrine of the unity of God. To which I say, that this truth of the essential unity of God has been preserved, and gloriously preached, by Christianity alone. The ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... however, with theological matters that we are now concerned. Patriarchal Palestine is for us the Palestine of the Patriarchal Age, as it has been disclosed by archaeological research, not the Palestine in which the revelation of God's will to man was to be made. It is sufficient for us that the Patriarchal Age has been shown by modern discovery to be a fact, and that in the narratives of the Book of Genesis we have authentic records of the past. There was indeed a Patriarchal Palestine, and the glimpses of it that we get in ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... him to death knew not that she did it, or would have died ere she had done it. For she loved him. He that hangs him does so in obedience to the Duke, and asks no more than "Where is the rope?" The Duke, very exactly he hath told us, works God's will, in which holy employ he's not to be questioned. We have then left upon this finger, only Jack whose soul now plucks the left sleeve of Destiny in Hell to overtake why she clapped him up like a fly on a sunny wall. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... replied Arthur, "for I am more beholden to you than to any one else in the world, and also to my good lady and foster mother, your wife, who has reared me as if I were her own child. If it be God's will that I shall sometime become king, ask of me then ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... about the first is easily deduced from the nature of God's will, which is only distinguished from His understanding in relation to our intellect—that is, the will and the understanding of God are in reality one and the same, and are only distinguished in relation to our thoughts which we form concerning God's ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... that he is said to have married her secretly within three years of first setting eyes on her. Her future and that of the children she had borne to him became his chief concern; and as early as 1708, when he was leaving Moscow to join his army, he left behind him a note: "If, by God's will, anything should happen to me, let the 3000 roubles which will be found in Menshikoff's house be given to Catherine ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... resolved,' he wrote, in 1609, 'to give no thought whatever to these wretchednesses. He who thinks too much of living knows not how to live well. One is bound to die once; to be curious about the day or place or manner of dying is unprofitable. Whatsoever is God's will is good.'[128] As fear had no hold upon his nature, so was he wholly free from the dominion of the senses. A woman's name, if we except that of the Queen of France, is, I think, not once mentioned in his correspondence. Even natural affections seem to have been obliterated; for he records ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... rich store of their blossoms glowing Ten for one I take they're on me bestowing: Oh, I should like to see, if God's will it may be, Many, many a summer of ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... by annihilation. But no substance, material or immaterial, can be annihilated by any finite or second cause; it can be annihilated only by the will of him who created it; and the question respecting the soul of man remains, What are the indications of God's will concerning it? When this question is seriously entertained, we can hardly fail to see in the structure of its powers, in the grandeur of its capacities, in the moral and responsible consciousness which belongs to ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... course and will aim to reach Fort Meade. Follow as soon as you can, and we will look out for each other; but give your thoughts and energies to taking care of yourself. More than likely we shall not see each other until we meet at the post, if it be God's will that we shall safely ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... swallows came flying in, and lifted up their song, sitting now on the saint's hand, now on his shoulder, now on his knee. And how, when Wilfrid wondered thereat, Guthlac made answer, 'Know you not that he who hath led his life according to God's will, to him the wild beasts and the wild birds draw ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... is terrible, dear child, and yet I am wondering if, after all, it is not for the best ... that you will be an orphan. It may be better for you to go alone than to be taken to them by a mother whom they have scorned. Well, God's will is that you should be left alone ... in a few hours ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... him well and honourably until he died: leaving to his friends the 'comfort that being dead he hath not outlived his own honour,' and that he had nobly shown how false and vain, and therefore how contrary to God's will, the 'ambitious and bloudie practices of ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... death, but will not turn a step from his way. If Death be coming, he will confront him. He does not believe in chance. He is ready—that is willing. All that is needful is, that he should not go as one who cannot help it, but as one who is for God's will, who chooses that will ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... rather cruel. You could only appease her with piles of hemmed sheets and darned stockings. If you didn't take care she would get hold of you and never rest till she had broken you, or turned and twisted you to her own will. She would say it was God's will. She would ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... High or Low; he abhorred Puseyism, Jesuitry, spoke of the "Free Kirk and other rubbish," and recorded his definite disbelief, in any ordinary sense, in Revelation and in Miracles. "It is as certain as Mathematics that no such thing has ever been on earth." History is a perpetual revelation of God's will and justice, and the stars in their courses are a perpetual miracle, is his refrain. This is not what Orthodoxy means, and no one was more intolerant than Carlyle of all shifts and devices to slur the difference ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... another frequent scourge. In 1721 it attacked nearly six thousand persons in Boston, about half the population, killing some nine hundred. The clergy, almost to a man, decried vaccination when first vented, proclaiming it an effort to thwart God's will. Clergymen, except perhaps in Carolina and Virginia, were somewhat better educated, yet those in New England led all others ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... not enough. Many a man knows the gospel precepts and promises by heart who is not touched by saving grace. Knowledge is often useless or positively harmful, and what we want is to know God's will and observe it. Even good resolutions are not enough. No doubt they are helpful in their way, but the Bible does not lead us to believe that they can save a man. It does not say: "As many as resolved to receive Him, to them gave He power ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... work well done cannot quiet the conscience. But it is well to have the testimony of a good conscience in the last judgment that we have performed our duty faithfully in accordance with God's will. ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... dresses us for heaven: he loves to see us struggling with a disease, and resisting the devil, and contesting against the weaknesses of nature, and against hope to believe in hope—resigning ourselves to God's will, praying Him to choose for us, and dying in all things but faith and its blest consequents; ut ad officium cum periculo sinus prompti—and the danger and the resistance shall endear the office. For so have I known the boisterous north wind pass ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... should I have been the favored one; I with my broken heart and now lonely life? Some great inscrutable reason there must be; at my worst I did not deny that. But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with the reason. I just waited for it to be revealed to me, if it were God's will ever to reveal it. And that I conceive to be the one spirit in which a man may contemplate, with equal sanity and reverence, the mysteries and ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... family—whose master was most liberal in support of the Gospel, and whose mistress was a communicant at the Lord's table, and a professed follower of Christ! Here, in this family, where slavery is found in its mildest form, she had been kept in ignorance of God's will and word, and learned to know that the mildest form of American slavery, at this day of Christian civilization and Democratic liberty, was worse than death itself! She had learned by an experience of many years, that it was ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all right, I hope," said he, a little doubtfully. "It would be all right for papa, whichever way it were to end—and for mamma, too,— in one sense—and for all of us," added he, with a vague idea of the propriety of submission to God's will under any circumstances. "But papa is not worse—I think he is not worse, and it will be all right by and by when summer comes again." But he still watched his mother's face, and waited anxiously for her ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Moses explains some things clearly and directly, but that he hints at others philosophically under the form of allegory. And to these commonplaces of Alexandrian exegesis he adds as the lesson of the history of his people that "it goes well with those who follow God's will and observe His laws, and ill with those who rebel against Him and neglect His laws." To exhibit to the Greco-Roman world the power and majesty of the Jewish God and the excellence of the Jewish law—these ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... jester. Once when he was reproved for reading from a humorous book he said with passionate earnestness that the humor was his safety valve. If it were not for the relief he would die. It was true. But he lived on, not because he wanted to live, for he would rather have died. But it was God's will, and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... they burst into a flood of tears, in which Sparks, burying his face in the golden locks of the sweet girl who bowed her head upon his knee, joined audibly. At length, wiping away his tears, and checking the rising sobs that shook his manly bosom—'God's will be done, my children,' said the locksmith; 'we cannot help weeping, but let us not murmur. If we are to be wanderers and fugitives on the earth, let us never lose sight of the promise which assures us of an eternal refuge in a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... to be led, or want to be, at any rate. I must do the best—not second best—for her, for me. The best only is God's will. What else would you have? Be good to her these days, dear ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... sorry, Father," she answered, as he opened the door to let her go into the house ahead of him. "Sure, God was good to me, and to John and to the childer. Sure, I had him for thirty year, and he died right. I'm happy to do God's will." ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... But we must all try for it in the best way we can, little woman; and for those who by GOD's grace really practised it, it was almost as impossible to be downcast or disappointed as if they were already in Heaven. They wished for nothing to happen to themselves but GOD's will; they did nothing but for GOD's glory. And so a very good bishop says, 'I have my end, whether I succeed or am disappointed.' So you will have your end, my child, in being kind to these little birds in ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... religious man who knows God to be utterly real, from the man who says that God is merely a formula to satisfy moral and spiritual phenomena. The former has encountered him, the other has as yet felt only unassigned impulses. One says God's will is so; the other that Right is so. One says God moves me to do this or that; the other the Good Will in me which I share with you and all well-disposed men, moves me to do this or that. But the former makes an exterior reference and escapes ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... her own Church; and it is humbling and bitter that England should be called to submit to a foreign potentate in the affairs of faith—Nay, cry they like the Jews of old, not Christ but Barabbas—we will not have this Man to reign over us. And yet this is God's will and not that. Mark me, Mr. Norris, what you hope will never come to be—the Liar will not keep his word—you shall not have that National Church that you desire: as you have dealt, so will it be dealt to you: as you have rejected, so will you be rejected. England ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... were completely won over to her side by the piety and devoutness which she displayed, and by her firm assurance in the truth of her mission. She told them that it was God's will that she should go to the King, and that no one but her could save the kingdom of France. She said that she herself would rather remain with her poor mother and spin; but the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... startled by the tone in which he answered the lightness of mine. "I mean—don't be planning out the future. It is foolish—it is almost wrong. God's will is not as our ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... though with this difference: you have a will and reason, and your abandonment is to be the yielding of yourself to God because your clearest reason and most mature judgment tells you that such is best. From now on, instead of willing to do your own will, you are going to submit to God's will; for the most blessed thing in the world is the will ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... advises them to gain over the midwife and get her to substitute a little dog and throw the child into the river, which is done accordingly, when the first son with the gold star is born. For the second son, a dog is also substituted, and the king, as on the former occasion, says, "God's will be done: take care of the poor creature." But when the little girl with the silver star is smuggled away and the king is shown a third puppy as the queen's offspring, he is enraged. "They'll call me the father of dogs!" he exclaims, "and not without cause." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... sick woman, 'I am very ill, dear madam, and I think that I cannot live longer than a few weeks; but God's will be done! I have no trouble in leaving this world but on account of little Marten; yet I know that God will take care of him, and that I ought not to ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Tuscarora, nor do I think you altogether understand us; the less you say, therefore, the better for all parties. It is our duty, Miss Maud, to say 'God's will be done,' and the soldier who dies in the discharge of his duty is never to be pitied. I sincerely wish that the Rev. Mr. Woods was here; he would tell you all this in a manner that would admit of no dispute; as for myself, I am ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... yesterday. He took a tremendous fancy to you; I will tell you a secret, mon cher cousin, he is simply crazy about my Lisa. Well, he is of good family, has a capital position in the service, and a clever fellow, a kammer-yunker, and if it is God's will, I for my part, as a mother, shall be well pleased. My responsibility of course is immense; the happiness of children depends, no doubt, on parts; still I may say, up till now, for better or for worse I have ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... expectation, we found it was not GOD'S will that we should enter at that time: the rather for that the wind, which had all this time been Easterly, came up to the Westward, and invited us to return again to our ship; where, on Sheere Thursday ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... great lady," said Jeanne, "and to such as you liberty may seem a little thing. You are so rich that you need never feel constraint. But to us poor folk freedom is life itself. It sweetens the hind's pottage, and gives the meanest an assurance of manhood.... Likewise it is God's will. My Holy Ones have told me that sweet France shall be purged from bondage. They have bidden me see the King crowned and lead him to Paris.... After that they have promised ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... murmur not; it is God's will, And they have learned to bend their own to his; Simply enduring, knowing that each ill Is but the herald of some future bliss; Striving and suffering, yet so silently They know it least who seem to know them best. Faithful and true through long adversity They ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... would deliver Mr. Wishart up, Bothwel promised upon his honour that no evil should befal him. Being inveigled with this, and consulting with Mr. Wishart who requested that the gates should be opened, saying, "God's will be done," the laird complied. The earl of Bothwel entered, with some gentlemen, who solemnly protested, That Mr. Wishart should receive no harm, but that he, viz. Bothwel, would either carry him to his own house, or return him again to Ormiston ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... here on earth would be quite normal and perfect. Slav Orthodoxy, on the contrary, emphasises very emphatically the abnormality of human life on earth from the beginning. Sin is the beginning of life, and sins are the continuation of it. The first man deviated in some way from God's will; the first brother killed his younger brother; the first-born nation made war with the second-born nation, and this bloody business of men, of which, in the greatest degree, we are the witnesses to-day, continued through many thousands of years. The ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... but the judgment which has not yet dawned for you, the enlightenment which is the knowledge of God's will. Worldly wisdom is a rule of thumb many men may acquire, the other wisdom, the wisdom of the soul, is personal—the reward of revelation which springs from desire. You ask me what I think you should do. I will tell you—but you will not do it, you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... perfect safety, though the unusual pallor of his grave countenance showed that he was fully alive to the terrible situation. "I am resting on little more than my heels, and the strain is almost too much for me even now. I could not hold on till you went to the boat and returned. No, it seems to be God's will—and," added he ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... light next day, to Simmons. Sure enough, the poor fellow did get a bit easier next day, and I felt clear mad to think he was goin' to die before my very eyes. "Not if I can help it!" I cries, quite savage like. But he only smiled a patient smile, and said, "God's will be done, mate. He knows best, and I aint in any ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement; and I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do. I trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views I have not in any respect ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... hideous possibility, and answered with an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's will." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... doctor of theology named William Aymeri, 'why do you require soldiers, if you tell us that it is God's will that the English shall be driven out of France? If that is the case, then there is no need of soldiers, for surely, if it be God's will that the enemy should fly the country, go ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... school, said, "We don't look on those things in the same fanciful manner that you do; we are contented with all the common-places of life, and look for nothing beyond the present. If things don't go well, it is God's will; and if they do go well, that ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... and called on the sons of such fathers to achieve yet greater deeds. As the burning words dropped from his lips they lighted a flame in every heart, and the whole assembly suddenly rose, and shouted with one voice, "It is God's will! It is God's will!" Urban caught up the cry: "Yes, without doubt, it is God's will. He has dictated to you the words, let them be your war-cry, and be this your badge!" As he spoke he held up a crucifix. The great meeting was moved like one man; and, falling on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... all necessary care and diligence, by prayerful instruction, admonition, example, and discipline that this child may renounce and avoid everything that is evil and that she may keep God's will and commandments as ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... to quench. If she could see Richard Everidge, she would tell him that she did believe in altitudes now. It was possible even in the valleys to live above the clouds. 'Do not seek happiness,' Tryphosa had said, 'but harmony with God's will,' and God's will for her was Sleepy Hollow. 'It is not what we do, but what we are, dear child,' she seemed to hear her saying. She remembered reading that 'the smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... strange that the distressed in body or mind turn away from a religion of dreary formalities and vague, uncomprehended mental processes. Instant and practical help is what is craved; and just such help Christ ever gave when he came to manifest God's will and ways to men. By whose authority do some religious teachers now lead the suffering through such a round-about, intricate, or arid path of things to be done and doctrines to be accepted before bringing ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... argument should just fail to prove this; because it is God's Will that men should be equal before Him: the man who can argue very cleverly was not designed to have an advantage over the stupid or ignorant man in their dealings with God. The meaning of our Lord's words, The poor have the Gospel preached ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... weeks yet, Doctor?—But God's will be done! I shall, however, by this means, have full time, if I have but strength and intellect, to do all that is now upon my mind to do. And so, Sirs, I can but once more thank you [turning to each of us] for all your goodness ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... ways in which living power, personal power, the power of a will, may enter a soul and give it life; the one is when God's will works upon us, and the other when our wills work upon one another. God's will may directly penetrate ours, enabling us to will and to do of his good pleasure; and our own wills, thus inspired, may be the torch ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... irrevocable consecration, I gave myself and all I had to Him, and have never, for one moment, regretted that I did so. The single principle of my existence, from that day to this, has been to do with my might what it was given to me to see it was God's will I should do. You see, my dear Miss Carroll, that I, who never sought anything, am not now capable of seeking anything, nor even permitted to do so; and, on the other hand, that I, who never refused to undertake any duty, am not allowed now to hesitate, if the Lord ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... hearts, which are foolish, and deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, soon grow weary of good, but are ever ready to delight in evil, it came to pass that, instead of Martha teaching poor ignorant Bess how to do God's will, Bess was leading her into all sorts of ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... simply beautiful, yet deeply earnest, of Browning's lyrical poems. It is a parable in which "the allegorical intent seems to be shed by the story, like a natural perfume from a flower;" and it preaches a sermon on contentment and the doing of God's will such as no theologian could better. Saul (which I shall mention here, though only the first part, sections one to nine, appeared in Dramatic Romances, sections ten to nineteen being first published in Men and Women) has been by some considered almost or quite Browning's finest poem. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... with the great purpose that had set one exactly where one was, and given one a temperament, a character, good and evil desires, hopes, longings, temptations, aspirations. One could not escape from them, thank God. If one only desired God's will, one's sins and sufferings as well as one's hopes and joys all worked together to a far-off end. One must go straight forward, in courage and ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... child of God is, "Does God want me sanctified? Then open the altar for I am coming." He does not tarry; he does not higgle and hesitate; he makes for the "straw pile" if in a New England camp; the "saw-dust" if down South; the "altar rail" if in a spiritual church; to his knees at any rate, for God's will he desires and must have. Thank ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... you did right? Certainly! What nature keeps back, accident sometimes gives, Madame John; either is God's will. Don't cry. 'Stealing from the dead?' No! It was giving, yes! They are thanking you ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... their tender years they had not yet sufficient strength to achieve anything, and that therefore this thing was foolish and undertaken without due consideration; the children answered briefly that they were obeying God's will, and would willingly and gladly suffer all the trials He would send them. And they went their way, some turning back at Mayence, others at Piacenza, and others at Rome; a small number arrived at Marseilles, but whether they crossed the sea or not, and what happened to them, no one knows; ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... Phoebe's heart tinged the blind woman's with its cheery faith. "I figure it this way," the girl said; "we'll do all we can and then if we fail there's time enough to be resigned and say it's God's will." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... not making things clear; but I will try to do so, and then you must help me. I have been a coward, father—that's the truth—and have rebelled against my hard fate—God's will was not my will, and I wanted to live ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... prayer. He asked me how it could happen that I, a convert of only a few years, should have a state of prayer he had not attained though in the Church all his life and striving for perfection. I told him that it was God's will to set apart some men for a certain work and specially prepare them for it, and cause them, as He had me, to be brought under the influence of special Divine graces from boyhood. L'hoir then began to send anybody with difficulties to me, and God gave me grace to settle them. Then murmurs arose ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... with strong crying and tears? Was not the asking done to teach us two things—that He was very man, like ourselves, shrinking from pain and death as much as the very weakest of us can shrink, and also that we may ask anything and everything, if only we desire beyond it that God's will ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... telegram early in the morning, and had not a minute in coming here, and that I could not make any one in the house hear me. He paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly, "Then I fear we are too late. God's will be done!" ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... not argue on Ruth's case. In that I have acknowledged my error. I do not argue on any case. I state my firm belief, that it is God's will that we should not dare to trample any of His creatures down to the hopeless dust; that it is God's will that the women who have fallen should be numbered among those who have broken hearts to be bound up, not cast aside as lost beyond recall. If this be God's will, as a thing of God it will ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... voice is uniform in its testimony? Do tell me, sir, if that voice ever told you that it was not the will of God that all men should be saved! Is it not by the influence of the spirit of this voice that you pray for the salvation of all men? And would this small still voice tell you that it is not God's will to save all men, and then induce you to pray for all men? If I be not a stranger to this heavenly voice which teaches me to wrap myself in my mantle, the Lord my righteousness, it influences me to pray in faith, nothing doubting, for ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... profound truth that the New Covenant needed for its Mediator, its Herald, its Guarantor and Conveyer of blessing, not a Moses but a Messiah, who could both die and reign, could at once be Sacrifice and Priest. Covenants, in the normal order of God's will in Scripture, demanded death for their ratification. "Where covenant is, there must be brought in the death of the covenant-victim."[J] So it was with the old covenant (verses 18-21) in the narrative of Exodus xxiv. So, throughout the Mosaic ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... after the model of perfection which they fondly imagined they had discovered. And where should they find that perfect system, except in the awful and mysterious volume wherein was the revelation of God's will, and which, with a devotion that had impressed its every syllable on their minds, they had day and night been studying? Was there not contained therein a form of government which He had given to his favored people; and what did both ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... bank on the edge of a willow bottom. His bed was a few boards with a straw mattress and a few quilts. The room was lighted by a single sash—the rude shelter of two of God's children. When he felt himself sinking, he said: I do not know what God's will for me is, but whatever it is I am ready. I have no fears. The day before he died he said: I have one heart. I trust only in Jesus; I have said this to you often. We laid him away just after the morning meeting last ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... becomes of the wicked?" We all answered as cheerfully as grasshoppers sing in Minnesota, "Yes, sir." "Do you know, boys, that you all ought to go to hell?" "Yes, sir." As a final test: "Boys, would you be willing to go to hell if it was God's will?" And every little liar said, "Yes, sir." The dear old minister used to try to impress upon our minds about how long we would stay there after we got there, and he used to say in an awful tone of voice—do you know I think that is what gives them ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... aware, only he lost his head by the way; and if this had not been done, all order and government must have ceased throughout the land, and the mice and the rats rule the cats, which was against the order of nature and contrary to God's will. But his gracious lady might take consolation, for Sidonia had been carried from the castle that morning by four of the clock, and, by God's grace, never should set foot in it again. But there was another gravamen, and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... you study to subdue the royal will and not to prefer it to the bishops of Christ, and rather to learn holy things by them than to teach them; to follow the form traced out by the Church, not after human fashion to impose rules on it, nor wish to dominate the commands of that power to whom it is God's will that your clemency should devoutly submit, lest, if the measure of the divine disposition be overpast, it may end in the disgrace of the disponent. And from this time I absolve my conscience as to all ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... be allowed existence. The sacred creed of each is that the immensity of Germany is such that there can be no room on the earth for another than itself. Blood and iron will clear the world of the inferior peoples. To the masses that is their God's will. Their God is an understudy ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... squeezing a lemon; and the Bible that they would give, he said, "was nothing save a juiceless rind." He totally rejected the scientific reading of the Bible for common purposes; and maintained, with great ardor, that the more simple and human our reading of God's word is, the nearer do we approach God's will. We must make use of our own thoughts, and we must imagine living scenes, with the inspired words as our thought-outlines. The whole policy of the new class of critics, he believed, was a thoroughly mistaken one. Instead of discarding the pictorial Biblical beauties, as they ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... expiatory by the king, the husband of the same unfortunate Isabella. He was that subtle tyrant of Spain, who had the grace to say, on the destruction of the Invincible Armada, "I sent my fleet to combat with the English, not with the elements. God's will ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be done, as in heaven, so on earth.' This petition is too frequently applied alone to the suffering of the will of God. In heaven God's will is done, and the Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven: in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As the will ...
— Lord, Teach Us To Pray • Andrew Murray |
