Till
then we can expect only explanations of cholera and of God's other
visitations of affliction, which are so superstitious, so irrational,
so little connected with the matter in hand, that they would be
ridiculous, were they not somewhat blasphemous. But when men arise
in this land who believe truly in an ever-present God of order,
revealed in His Son Jesus Christ; when men shall arise in this land,
who will believe that faith with their whole hearts, and will live
and die for it and by it; acting as if they really believed that in
God we live, and move, and have our being; as if they really believed
that they were in the kingdom and rule of Christ,--a rule of awful
severity, and yet of perfect love,--a rule, meanwhile, which men can
understand, and are meant to understand, that they may not only obey
the laws of God, but know the mind of God, and copy the dealings of
God, and do the will of God; and when men arise in this land, who
have that holy faith in their hearts, and courage to act upon it,
then cholera will vanish away, and the physical and moral causes of a
hundred other evils which torment poor human beings through no anger
of God, but simply through their own folly, and greediness, and
ignorance.
All these shall vanish away, in the day when the knowledge of the
Lord shall cover the land, and men shall say, in spirit and in truth,
as Christ their Lord has said before,--'Sacrifice and burnt-offering
thou wouldest not.
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