It is always so, you will find, with great national
afflictions. I believe, when we know more of God and His laws, we
shall find it true even in our smallest private sorrows. God is
unchangeable; He does not lose His temper, as heathens and
superstitious men fancy, to punish us. He does not change His order
to punish us. WE break His order, and the order goes on in spite of
us and crushes us: and so we get God's judgment, God's opinion of
our breaking His laws. You will find it so almost always in history.
If a nation is laid waste by war, it is generally their own fault.
They have sinned against the law which God has appointed for nations.
They have lost courage and prudence, and trust in God, and fellow-
feeling and unity, and they have become cowardly and selfish and
split up into parties, and so they are easily conquered by their own
fault, as the Bible tells us the Jews were by the Chaldeans; and
their ruin is God's judgment, God's opinion plainly expressed of what
He thinks of them for having become cowardly and selfish, and
factious and disinterested. So it is with famine again. Famines
come by a nation's own fault--they are God's plainly spoken opinion
of what HE thinks of breaking His laws of industry and thrift, by
improvidence and bad farming.
Pages:
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178