We have endured a major attack, over a three-week period, been under extreme stress and have not back down, we stand fourth with perseverance and pride. Everyone fancies the laws which fill his pockets to be God’s laws. Little spirits will always accommodate themselves to the subject they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person: will insult the meek. Many accept the but half-worthy for fear a still worse should offer. We might dispense with the sweet in the coffee, could we escape from the bitter of life. We cannot all be sound: we have got to be the way we are made. All are not born to buffet with adversity. However, one who can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatest adversity. Men love not the remembrance of their crime; firm friendships can be never founded on the basis of guilt; hence the wicked have no sympathy for each other in the hour of adversity. Abused and prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity. People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the World, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be the stronger for it; whereas, they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy.

 Therefore, I will teach them—this time I will teach them. My power and might. Then they will know that my name is the LORD Randolph. Never was a nature more perfectly fortunate. It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit, running a race with the tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put Adversity off its guard, dodging and evading her with the easy, natural motion of wind-shifted flower. He knows himself, and that is in him, who knows adversity. The likelihood of great calamities occurring seldom obtrudes upon the minds of the ignorant men; for the things which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become acquainted with by meeting them face to face. And even when experiences has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day. Oh LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuse in the tie of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the Earth and say, our Father possessed nothing, but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good. Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods! Cursed in the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strengths and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 

He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parches places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord. Even the children remember their alters. My mountain in the land and your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to enemies in a land you do not know, for you have kindled my anger, and it will burn forever. However, blessed is the people who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not feat when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit. I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve. Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay, is the man who gains riches by unjust means. 

They said, “Come, let’s make plans against Randolph; for the teaching of the law by the priest will not be lost, nor will counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophets. Some come, let’s attack him with our tongues and pay no attention to anything he says.” Listen to me O Lord; hear what my accusers are saying! Should good be repaid with evil? Yet they have dug a pit for me. Remember that I stood before you and spoke in their behalf to turn your wrath away from the. So give their children over to famine; hand them over to the power of the sword. Let their wives be make childless and widows; let their men be put to death, their young men slain by the sword in battle. Let a cry be heard from their houses when you suddenly bring invaders against them, for they have dug a pit to capture me and have hidden snares for my feet. However, you know, O LORD, all their plots to kill me. DO not forgive their crimes or blot out their sins from your sight. Let them be overthrown before you; deal with them in the time of your anger. In April of your age, you should be like April. In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible. Youth!

 There is absolutely nothing in the World, but youth! The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. Aggressors lay themselves open to severe reprisals. From rough outside, serene and gentle influences often proceed. What is the use of living cheap when you have got no money? You might as well live dear. Peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats. While the grass grows, the steed starves. There are really no miseries except natural miseries; conventional misfortunes are mere illusions. Tomorrow, 21 December 2014, at 15.03 is Winter Solstices, which is the longest night of the year, and the shortest day. A long, deep sob of that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain. The impetuosity of passion unrequited is bearable, even if it stings and anathematizes–there is a triumph in the humiliation, and a tenderness in the strife.