We Cannot Be Robbed of God's Providence

Whether for correction or for his land 
or for love, he causes it to happen. 
Job 37:13

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High

that good and bad come?

Lamentations 3:38

I form light and create darkness,

I make well-being and create calamity,

I am the Lord, who does all these.
Isaiah 45:7

"We cannot be robbed of God's providence." This was one of the sayings current in the household of Thomas Carlyle, apparently much on the lips of that brilliant woman, Jane Welsh Carlyle. In it, the plummet is let down to the bottom of the Christian's confidence and hope. It is because we cannot be robbed of God's providence that we know, amid whatever encircling gloom, that all things shall work together for good to those that love him. It is because we cannot be robbed of God's providence that we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ---not tribulation, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword...

Were not God's providence over all, could trouble come without his sending, were Christians the possible prey of this or the other fiendish enemy, when perchance God was musing, or gone aside, or on a journey, or sleeping, what certainty of hope could be ours? "Does God send trouble?" Surely, surely. He and he only. To the sinner in punishment, to his children in chastisement. To suggest that it does not always come from his hands is to take away all our comfort...

The world may be black to us; there may no longer be hope in man; anguish and trouble may be our daily portion; but there is this light that shines through all the darkness: "We cannot be robbed of God's providence." So long as the soul keeps firm hold of this great truth it will be able to breast all storms.  A firm faith in the universal providence of God is the solution of all earthly troubles.

--B. B. Warfield, 'God's Providence Over All,' in Selected Shorter Writings of B. B. Warfield (2 vols; ed. J. E. Meeter; P&R, 2001), 1:110; quoted in Paul Helseth, 'Right Reason' and the Princeton Mind: An Unorthodox Proposal (P&R, 2010)

This is from a man whose wife was struck by lightning and permanently paralyzed on their honeymoon.  When he talks about not being robbed of God's providence, it wasn't detached theory for him. It was the only consolation for his soul.