The Christian certainties discourses Author:John Clifford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HOW TO BE SURE OF THE VOICE OF GOD. " If now I have found grace in Thy sight, then show me a sign that it is thou that talkest with me."—Judges vi. 17. l"1... more » IDEON, one of the greatest of the Judges of -A Israel, was a might)' man of valour; and wore, as one of the signs of his real greatness, the robe of modesty as a garment, whilst, like his predecessor Moses, he shrank from tasks involving grave responsibilities and vast issues, in a spirit of severe and painful self-distrust. Not that he wished to shirk duty; but that he panted to be sure of the voice of God, and, therefore, invented and varied his devices or " tests " so that he might obtain, somehow or other, a full assurance of understanding and of faith, that in all he did he was obevinp; the mandate of Israel's God. V O As to some of us, so to him, the first whispers of the divine voice fall on his ears whilst he is at his ordinary work, " beating out the wheat " in the winepress at Ophrah. Louder and louder God speaks to him ; and the more urgent and sonorous the call, the more frankly he tells his doubts, and the more rigidly he uses his tests. Now he waits for the fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice on the altar, and now for the nightly dew to saturate "the fleece of wool" without sprinkling with its sparkling globes the ground on which it rests. It is done, but, still quivering with the fearof misconception, he dares to push his experiments to the uttermost, and wholly reverses the conditions of the problem, to find the conviction of a divine warrant for his work seizing him with such overpowering might that he becomes forthwith as prompt and efficient in deed as he was cautious and self-renouncing in spirit; rises up like Luther to protest against and destroy the enslaving idolatries of his countrymen...« less