suffice for you. It was only the hellish serpent that said cunningly and craftily: “Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?”[1] He should have said: why do you not eat of this tree? Then Eve might easily have answered him: because God has forbidden us. But the deceitful hellish foe put the question another way: “why hath God commanded you?”
Without prying into the reasons why God so ordains things. No, my dear brethren, whenever we know that God wishes us to do something, it is not for us to ask why He so wishes it. The most powerful reason for anything is that God so wills it; God has decreed it; God has ordained it; God has done it. The highest justice, as Salvianus rightly remarks, is the will and ordination of God; the highest wisdom to allow one’s self quietly and with confidence to be ruled in all things by His holy will and all-wise providence. Sometimes parents say to one of their children: go to school and study; to another: stay at home and help your father at his work; to a third: come into the garden and take a walk with me. If the children are naughty they will at once commence to murmur and say: why should I study? why must I work, while he goes to the garden? But if they are obedient, well-reared children, as all Christian children should be, they do not hesitate a moment, but at once and willingly fulfil their par ents commands. Yes, they say; I will do whatever my father or mother wishes. In the same manner should we, as obedient children of God in all circumstances, in all dispensations of Divine Providence, think and say with Christ our dear Saviour: “Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in Thy sight.”[2] Yes, my heavenly Father! since Thou hast so ordained it, Thy will is a sufficient reason for me to be fully satisfied with it. Yes, Father! Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Another Introduction to the same sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent.
Text.
Beatus est, qui non fuerit scandalizatus in me.—Matt. xi. 6.
“Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in Me.”
Introduction.
And could any one be scandalized in Jesus Christ, the most perfect Model of all holiness, whose manners, demeanor, words,
