Reflection 67

On “acquiescing cheerfully and entirely in the will of God,” despite the stormy sea ahead – a prayer at the beginning of the winter session, 1805… 

This call [from Pitt who requested his return to London] he at once obeyed, casting only one lingering look at the peaceful quietness which he was leaving. “If it were not best to acquiesce cheerfully and entirely in the will of God, I should grieve at being so poorly to-day, because it is probably my last Sunday before I go to London to engage in the hurly-burly scene I there dwell in. I feel like one who is about to launch into a stormy sea, and who knows from fatal experience how little his own powers are equal to its buffetings. O Lord, do Thou fit me for it. Enable me to seek Thy glory, and not my own; to watch unto prayer; to wait diligently on God; to love Him and my Redeemer from the heart; and to be constrained by this love to live actively and faithfully devoting all my faculties and powers to His service, and the benefit of my fellow-creatures. Especially let me discharge with fidelity and humility the duties of my proper station, as unto the Lord, and not unto men; submitting patiently to the will of God, if it be His will that we should be defeated in our effort to deliver our country from the load of guilt and shame which now hangs round her neck, and is, perhaps, like a gangrene, eating out her vital strength, and preparing, though gradually, the consummation of her ruin. O Lord, do Thou lead and guide me.”

Date: Early January 1805

Volume 3: Page 208-209

Posted: 20260502