But we shall never be able to come to God, we shall never succeed even in getting near the secret of interior peace and contentment until we are able to grasp more or less comprehensively the great basic truths of our existence: that God loves each one of us with the love of an infinite Father, and that His Providence is so universal and omnipotent as to extend to all things, even to the numbering of the hairs of our head. We talk much about chance and fortune and accident, we speak every day of things happening, as if by the sheerest contingence, without warning or previous knowledge; and so it is with reference to ourselves, and to all the world perhaps: but with reference to divine Providence it is not so; there is nothing accidental, nothing unforeseen with respect to God. “Without Thy counsel and Providence, and without cause, nothing cometh to pass in the earth,”(95) says the Imitation. But what does this mean, “God provides?” It means that the will of the omnipotent Father directs and governs everything. “Providence,” says St. John Damscene, “is the will of God, by which all things are fitly and harmoniously governed,”(96) and such is its power that nothing can elude or deceive it, neither can it be hindered or baffled in any way. “For God will not except any man’s person, neither will He stand in awe of any man’s greatness; for He made the little and the great, and He hath equally care of all.”(97) And just as divine Providence disposes and governs all the events of life, directing each to its proper end, so the divine Will is the cause of everything that exists. Just as it is impossible that anything should escape God’s knowledge and directing hand, so is it impossible that anything should exist or come into being without the direct intervention or permission of His will. There is nothing in the world which God has not made, and nothing takes place which is not according to His good-pleasure, except the malice and guilt of sin. Even all the other evils of life, such as sickness, suffering, disease, poverty, cold, hunger, thirst, and the like, God actually and positively wills. And precisely because these things proceed from His will, they cannot be bad. God is the author of all good, and evil He cannot do. So good, indeed, is He that, if He were not sufficiently omnipotent to draw good out of evil, He would never have permitted any evil to exist. “God has judged it better,” says St. Augustine, “to work good out of evil, than to allow no evil.”(98) We must not argue in our foolishness and try to understand all the doings of God, for His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts.(99) It is often beyond our power even to understand our fellow-creatures, and how foolish it is to complain because we cannot comprehend the great Creator! Enough for us, if we be sincere and right of heart, to know, as we do, that God is good, that He loves us individually, and that His protecting