mic sweep Europe and America?
People say, "That will entirely depend on whether inoculation is a
successful experiment; that will depend entirely on quarantine
regulations; that will depend on the early or late appearance of
frost; that epidemic is pitched into the world, and it goes blundering
across the continents, and it is all guess-work and an appalling
perhaps."

My friends, I think, perhaps, that God had something to do with it,
and that His mercy may have in some way protected us--that He may have
done as much for us as the quarantine and the health officers. It was
right and a necessity that all caution should be used, but there has
come enough macaroni from Italy, and enough grapes from the south of
France, and enough rags from tatterdemalions, and hidden in these
articles of transportation enough choleraic germs to have left by this
time all Brooklyn mourning at Greenwood, and all Philadelphia at
Laurel Hill, and all Boston at Mount Auburn. I thank all the doctors
and quarantines; but, more than all, and first of all, and last of
all, and all the time, I thank God. In all the six thousand years of
the world's existence there has not one thing merely "happened so."
God is not an anarchist, but a King, a Father.

When little Tod, the son of President Lincoln, died, all the land
sympathized with the sorrow in the White House. He used to rush into
the room where the cabinet was in session, and while the most eminent
men of the land were discussing the questions of national existence.
But the child had no care about those questions. Now God the Father,
and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are in perpetual session in
regard to this world and kindred worlds. Shall you, His child, rush in
to criticise or arraign or condemn the divine government? No; the
Cabinet of the Eternal Three can govern and will govern in the wisest
and best way, and there never will be a mistake, and like razor
skillfully swung, shall cut that which ought to be cut, and avoid that
which ought to be avoided. Precision to the very hair-breadth. Earthly
time-pieces may get out of order and strike wrong, saying that it is
one o'clock when it is two, or two when it is three. God's clock is
always right, and when it is one it strikes one, and when it is twelve
it strikes twelve, and the second hand is as accurate as the minute
hand.

Further, my text tells us that God sometimes shaves nations: "In the
same day shall the Lord shave with the ra