--LUKE vii. 16.
We are assembled this day to thank God solemnly for the passing away
of the cholera from England; and we must surely not forget to thank
Him at the same time for the passing away of the fever, which has
caused so much expense, sorrow, and death among us. Now I wish to
say a very few words to you on this same matter, to show you not only
how to be thankful to God, but what to be thankful for. You may say:
It is easy enough for us to know what to thank God for in this case.
We come to thank Him, as we have just said in the public prayers, for
having withdrawn this heavy visitation from us. If so, my friends,
what we shall thank Him for depends on what we mean by talking of a
visitation from God.
Now I do not know what people may think in this parish, but I suspect
that very many all over England do NOT know what to thank God for
just now; and are altogether thanking him for the wrong thing--for a
thing which, very happily for them, He has NOT done for them, and
which, if He had done it for them, would have been worse for them
than all the evil which ever happened to them from their youth up
until now. To be plain then, many, I am afraid, are thanking God for
having gone away and left them. While the cholera was here, they
said that God was visiting them; and now that the cholera is over,
they consider that God's visit is over too, and are joyful and light
of heart thereat.
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