Great Tribulation

“ In these times of tribulation there was one who shared in the common danger, suffering, and humiliation, and who, from the exalted rank which she occupied, and the station to which she seemed destined, was peculiarly an object of distrust and alarm to the bigots, who were exulting in their day of power. ”

“ But, although the soul be perfect and pure while it is in the body, it can not see God as it desireth, because of the sorrow and tribulation of the body, except with much labor through faith and hope and love. ”

“ It be a fine patch o' white in my quilt, Jenny!'
'Tribbylation!' said the old woman musingly; 'I mind o' several verses on it: "In the world ye shall have tribbylation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." "We must through much tribbylation enter into the Kingdom of God." "We glory in tribbylation also, knowing that tribbylation worketh patience." "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribbylation?" Ah, tribbylation is tryin' to the flesh, but 'tis for the improvin' of the soul!'
'And does everybody have it except children?' asked Betty with a solemn face. ”

“ To prove that perpetual wealth should be no evil token, you say first that for princes and prelates, and every man for others, we pray all for perpetual prosperity, and that in the common prayers of the church, too.
Then say you secondly, that if prosperity were so perilous and tribulation so profitable, every man ought to pray God to send others sorrow. ”

“ Tribulation Trepid will be thrown from the saddle, as a matter of course—and he was thrown. Did he undertake to leap the brook—the discouraging idea seemed to arrest him midway that he could not do it; and Trepid emerged dripping from the wave. And so it was, and so it has been, throughout the life of Tribulation—such, it may be, is the secret why the lives of so many of our kind present an unbroken series of disastrous failure. They lack the inspiring voice of hope. ”

“ If you reckon me now, against these, many other good deeds that a wealthy man may do—as, by riches to give alms, or by authority to labour in doing many men justice—or if you find further any other such thing; first, I say that the patient person in tribulation hath, in all these virtues of a wealthy man, an occasion of merit which the wealthy man hath not. For it is easy for the person who is in tribulation to be well willing to do the selfsame thing if he could. ”

“ Trimblerigg, when a whole continent was rushing into a state of conversion, and millions listening fervently to his daily orations, it was very difficult to keep back, in moments of inspired utterance, a declaration which would give the clou to the whole movement, letting organized society know in definite terms how brief, how startlingly brief, was its time-limit, before that great cataclysmic change which would take and turn it upside down. ”

“ Perhaps I may so escape from my present predicament, and I will give thee all the treasures that I possess.” The fox, however, replied, “Thou hast prolonged a conversation that will not procure thy liberation. Hope not, therefore, for thy escape through my means; but reflect upon thy former wicked conduct, and the perfidy and artifice which thou thoughtest to employ against me, and how near thou art to being stoned. Know that thy soul is about to quit the world, and to perish and depart from it: then wilt thou be reduced to destruction, and an evil abode is it to which thou goest!” ”

“ Wrath is coming for the world, but the Lord Jesus delivers His church from the wrath to come (1 Thess. i:10) . "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. v:9) .
II. What is the Tribulation?
The Word of God speaks of tribulation. Tribulations, distresses and all that goes with it are in the world on account of sin. Believers, though saved and no longer of the world, but delivered from this evil age, have tribulation and persecution likewise. ”

“ Paul biddeth, "Seek not for your own profit but for other folk's" and defend therefore of pity a poor widow or a poor fatherless child, and rather suffer sorrow by some strong extortioner than suffer them to take wrong; or if you be a judge and have such zeal to justice that you will abide tribulation by the malice of some mighty man rather than judge wrong for his favour—such tribulations, lo, are those that are better than only medicinable. ”

“ Wherefore, then, should I not aid in thy destruction when thou art of the associates of the devil? Know that I dreamt yesterday that I was dancing at thy wedding, and I related the dream to an interpreter, who said to me, ‘Thou wilt fall into a frightful danger, and escape from it.’ So I knew that my falling into thy power and my escape was the interpretation of my dream. Thou, too, knowest, O deceived idiot! that I am thine enemy. How, then, dost thou hope, with thy little sense and thine ignorance, that I will deliver thee, when thou hast heard what rude language I used? ”

“ For a god who tires of his handiwork is still responsible for it, however disillusioned; and when, employing me as his mouthpiece, Mr. Trimblerigg’s maker mocks at the tribal religions which have brought the world so near to ruin, he remains nevertheless a deity tribal in character, albeit a disgruntled one. ”

“ Would that the citizens of a more glorious place lived so far above the world that its trials should never have power to drag them down to the level of its slaves! Are the trifles which so often ruffle our tempers and depress our spirits worth such anxious thought from those who profess that their hearts and their treasures are above? ”

“ Hast thou considered me a true friend unto thee when I am an enemy who rejoiceth in thy misfortune? These words are more severe than the piercing of arrows, if thou understand. And as to thy saying that thou wilt give me such things as will be a store for me against the time of want, and will teach me stratagems by which I shall obtain access to the plenteous vineyards and strip the fruitful trees—how is it, O guileful traitor! that thou knowest not a stratagem by means of which to save thyself from destruction? ”

“ Every trifling accident discomposes us; and as the face of waters wafting in a storm so wrinkles itself, that it makes upon its forehead furrows deep and hollow like a grave: so do our great and little cares and trifles first make the wrinkles of old age, and then they dig a grave for us. ”

“ Through it all there runs the pathetic interest in trifles, half-hearted and wholly artificial, that you see among the lolling crowd of men when a great strike is on—the thoughtful kicking at odd pebbles ”

“ All that he lacked for the moment was the necessary environment, the atmosphere into which a new spiritual movement could be born. In politics it existed; in religion it had still to be found. Mr. Trimblerigg hesitated; and while he hesitated the call came, the spark of inspiration descended from on high, and what thereafter was saved to religion in a revivalism which swept the world, was lost to politics.
Two events, small in themselves, gave to his mind the impetus and direction it required. ”

“ It was only a trifle, you will say, that produced this inauspicious result; but need I repeat that trifles make up the sum of human life? Were we all to look back upon some of the most important incidents of our lives, I think—could we all be strictly honest with ourselves—we should be willing to allow that what seemed a mere “nothing” at the time was not without its influence, not only on our conduct, but on that{167} which goes by the name (for want of a better) of our destinies. ”

“ And this to me was a miracle, the one great miracle of the strike. For years I had labored to train myself to concentrate on one man at a time, to shut out all else for weeks on end, to feel this man so vividly that his self came into mine. Now with the same intensity I found myself striving day and night to feel not one but thousands of men, a blurred bewildering multitude. ”

“ It is not many of us who come to be told by the doctor: “For the rest of your existence you must give up eyesight,” or, “For the remainder of life you must go halt.” But these are trifles. Everything is a trifle, if we would only believe it. Riches and poverty, peace and war, fame and obscurity, town and country, England and the backwoods—all these are trifles compared with that other life which makes our own a living completeness. ”

“ Trimblerigg had seen that habit—habit of mind as well as body—is the dead weight in the world’s affairs [307] which separates man from faith, and prevents mountains from being moved. And so with Second Adventism, backed by spiritualism and prophecy, he had routed men’s minds out of their groove, simply by convincing them that on a given date, willy-nilly, the groove was coming to an end. Mr. Trimblerigg’s greatest exploit was not in building a city capable of containing a million souls, but in finding a million souls ready to flock to it. ”

“ Foolish this People, headlong, high-going, Which sings beyond endurance; Lofty in its good fortune, crawling in its bad; Of an unpitying extent of babble, To hide the vacancy of its ignorant mind. Of the Trifling it is a tender lover; The Trifling alone takes possession of its brain. ”

“ I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen—"hush!—this either is the very anarchy of strife, or else"—and then I listened more profoundly, and said as I raised my head—"or else, oh heavens! it is victory that swallows up all strife." ”

“ Trimblerigg, he has made another little mistake, and that his creation was really stuffed as full of them as a plum-pudding is stuffed with plums. And I have a hope that when tribal deity becomes properly apologetic for its many misshapings of a divided world, humanity will begin to come by its own, and acquire a theology which is not an [14] organized hypocrisy for the bolstering up of nationalities and peoples. ”

“ In other of his temptations, he stealeth on like a fox, but in this Turk's persecution for the faith, he runneth on roaring with assault like a ramping lion.
This temptation is, of all temptations, also the most perilous. For in temptations of prosperity he useth only delectable allectives to move a man to sin; and in other kinds of tribulation and adversity he useth only grief and pain to pull a man into murmuring, impatience, and blasphemy. ”

“ He was of the sort who combine enthusiasm with long-suffering, who, after each check, set about organizing the victory that is impossible, but is bound to come. And verily they must win the day. These men of no account, who had destroyed Royalty and upset the old order of things, this Trubert, a penniless optician, this Évariste Gamelin, an unknown dauber, could expect no mercy from their enemies. They had no choice save between victory and death. ”

“ Or we will, if we like, but not upon the compulsion of filling time.
You will discern that going tramping is at first an act of rebellion; only afterwards do you get free from rebelliousness as Nature sweetens your mind. Town makes men contentious; the country smooths out their souls. ”

“ And I will bring men to tribulation, and they shall go as if they were blind, because they have offended our Lord, and I will pour out their blood as dust, and their flesh as the dung of oxen, and their silver and gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of our Lord. And in the fire of his zeal shall the whole earth be consumed, when the Lord shall accomplish his absolute end, and bring solitariness upon all the inhabitants of the earth. ”

“ It obtains in all ages and on every shore. In the days of the Patriarchs, and in the days of the Bankers,—among the sleekly-attired people of civilized races, and among savage hordes, naked as the beasts,—everywhere and in all ages, this superstition has obtained, and crushed mankind, not with an iron, but with a golden rod. ”

“ It is with thorough rejoicing, almost with triumph, that I declare that the idle, genteel class has been cut up root and branch, has been driven forth out of its holding into the wide world, and has been punished with the penalty of extermination. ”

“ Have you sold your soul for dirt? And what have you sold your body for? Have you given away what you are for what you can get? Have you traded off your body for your soul or your soul for your body? Or have you gone on taking both with you on equal terms? You may think you have profited when you have lost. You may believe you are a victor when you are defeated. I have no quarrel with the earth. ”

“ Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security. ”

“ Never in my whole world’s existence have I come upon anybody who was able to answer his own prayers about himself, and about other people, with such conviction, avidity, and enthusiasm as Mr. Trimblerigg. ”

“ We searched into the effusions of the Troubadours, and, among all their absurdities and inequality, we found a wildness, a daring pouring forth of the soul, an unpruned richness of imagination, and, from time to time, a grandeur of conception and audacious eccentricity of thought, that filled us with unlooked for transport. ”

“ And then incontinently following, to the intent that we should see that it is not without necessity that the shield of God should compass us about upon every side, he showeth in what wise we are environed by the devil upon every side with snares and assaults, by four kinds of temptations and tribulations. Against all this compass of temptations and tribulations that round-compassing shield of God's truth shall so defend us and keep us safe that we shall need to dread none of them at all. ”