Preface
This book, reader, is not published to tell us that there is sin and
woe and misery in this world. We know it all too well. This book
is not published to tell us that there is an irreconcilable controversy
between darkness and light, sin and righteousness, wrong and right,
death and life. In our heart of hearts we know it, and know that we are
participators, actors, in the conflict.
But to every one of us comes at times a longing to know more
of the great controversy. How did the controversy begin? Or was it
always here? What elements enter into its awfully complex aspect?
How am I related to it? What is my responsibility? I find myself in this
world by no choice of my own. Does that mean to me evil or good?
What are the great principles involved? How long will the contro-
versy continue? What will be its ending? Will this earth sink, as some
scientists say, into the depths of a sunless, frozen, eternal night? Or is
there a better future?
The question comes closer still: How may the controversy in my
own heart, the strife between inflowing selfishness and outgoing love,
be settled in the victory of good, and settled forever? What does the
Bible say? What has God to teach us about this eternally important
question?
It is the aim of this book, reader, to help the troubled soul to a right
solution of all these problems. It is written by one who has tasted and
found that God is good, and who has learned in communion with God
and the study of his word that the secret of the Lord is with them that
fear Him, and that He will show them His covenant.
That we may better understand the principles of the all-important
controversy, in which the life of a universe is involved, the author
has set it before us in great, concrete object lessons of the last twenty
centuries.
The book opens with the sad closing scenes of Jerusalem’s history,
the city of God’s chosen, after her rejection of the Man of Calvary,
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who came to save. Thence onward along the great highway of the
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