only a holiday suit...

Brother Frothingham speaks of untried faith and the value of trials...His "Trials No Strange Thing" continued...

"Further, your faith is to be tested by calamities. Your faith, and not your morality only. Faith, that great confidence, which is so often confounded with the little peculiarities of sectarian opinion ; its divine elements being misapprehended among petty disputes, and its holy name taken to a falsehood. Whatever disadvantage falls upon us, serious enough to be called a trial, is meant to put to the proof our trust in God ; and a solemn proof it is, when applied to such a principle. It is easy to talk of this trust, when we speak without much reflection; when we intend little or nothing more than a general reference to the One Being, who is higher than ourselves and mightier than all. It is easy, out of the pleasant scenes of a well-furnished being, to say that we trust; when one half of the meaning is, that we are contented where we are, and the other half, possibly, that we have no little confidence in ourselves. But this is not the required thing. It is the merest acquiescence while there is nothing to disturb it. It is neither an earnest sentiment nor a deep seated principle. Profess it if you feel it. Wear it as long as it will hold together. But do not set much by it. It is only a holiday-suit. It has no portion yet of the sacred power that can weave sackcloth into a garment of dignity and praise, and scatter heavenly assurances among the dust and ashes in which the humbled heart must sit down. Losses show where you have laid up your treasure. Troubles show where you have established your rest. When your cup is filled from the earth's supplies, how can you perfectly know that the Lord is your portion? But when you find your strength small, your resources few, your hopes on this side of time faint, — when you are distracted with embarrassments and torn with pain, — then is the occasion for finding also the energy and the relief and the repose, that should be communicated by your faith."

Blessings