When you
look round on other men, you see that on the whole men prosper very much
as they deserve. There are exceptions, I know. Solomon knew that well.
Such strange and frightful exceptions, that one must believe that those
who have been so much wronged in this life will be righted in the life to
come. Children suffer for the sins of their parents. Innocent people
suffer with the guilty. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. And
these exceptions are much more rare than we choose to confess. When a
man complains to you that he has been unfortunate, that the world has
been unjust to him, that he has not had fair play in life, and so forth,
in three cases out of four you will find that it is more or less the
man's own fault; that he has _deserved_ his losses, that is, earned them
for himself. I do not mean that the man need have been a wicked man--not
in the least. But he has been imprudent, perhaps weak, hasty, stupid, or
something else; and his faults, perhaps some one fault, has hampered him,
thrown him back, and God has brought him to judgment for it, and made it
punish him. And why? Surely that he may see his fault and repent of it,
and mend it for the time to come.

I say, God may bring a man's fault into judgment, and let it punish him,
without the man being a bad man. And you, young people, will find in
after-life that you will have earned, deserved, merited, and worked out
for yourselves a great deal of your own happiness and misery.

I know this seems a hard doctrine. People are always ready to lay their
misfortunes on God, on the world, on any and every one, rather than on
themselves.

A bad education, for instance--a weakly constitution which some bring
into the world, with or without any fault of their own, are terrible
drawbacks and sore afflictions. The death of those near and dear to us,
of which we cannot always say, I have earned this, I have brought it on
myself. It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him good.

But because misfortunes may come upon us without our own fault, that is
no reason why we should not provide against the misfortunes which will be
our own fault. Nay, is it not all the stronger reason for providing
against them, that there are other sorrows against which we cannot
provide? Alas! is there not misery horrible enough hanging over our
heads daily in this mortal life without our making more for ourselves by
our own folly? We shall have grief enough before