But God

By A. B. Simpson

Preface

The subject of this little book is the greatest in the world. "I have lost everything," said a sorrowing woman to us once, "everything but God." That one phrase seemed to loom like a whole heaven and eclipse all that she had lost, for if she had God she had lost nothing and had gained everything.

The greatest need of our age and of every age, the greatest need of every human heart, is to know the resources and sufficiency of God.

The apostle paints it like a rainbow across a black and stormy sky. After describing the lost and helpless condition of sinful men, dead in trespasses and sin, children of wrath, subjects of the prince of the powers of the air, he suddenly pauses and utters the two words, "But God," -- "who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins,"

The same apostle again gives us the key to the true life of holiness in his short but striking antithesis, "Not I, but Christ lives in me."

The words stand out as the key to God's providence as we read the story of Peter's imprisonment and his approaching doom, while Herod waited on the morrow to bring him forth to execution. Then follows that simple, significant sentence, "But prayer was made without ceasing unto God for him." And that little "but" was mightier than Herod's wrath or the Pharisee's hate or the bars and bolts of the prison.

Awfully and solemnly the same words loom up again in the parable of the fool who had staked all on this world's wealth and fortune, consulting everybody else about his pleasures and his plans until suddenly, like the cold gates of death and judgment, we come against the terrible sentence, "But God said unto him, you fool."

The pages that follow are an attempt to unfold the all-sufficiency and infinite variety of the resources of God.