f the "Britannic," the Cunard Line gives
only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Oregon;" but of the
sailing of that ship that Noah commanded God gave one hundred and
twenty years' announcement and warning. Patience antediluvian,
patience postdiluvian, patience in times Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic,
Davidic, Pauline, Lutheran, Whitefieldian. Patience with men and
nations. Patience with barbarisms and civilizations. Six thousand
years of patience! Overtopping attribute of God, all of whose
attributes are immeasurable. Why do the wicked live? That their
overthrow may be the more impressive and climacteric. They must pile
up their mischief until all the community shall see it, until the
nation shall see it, until all the world shall see it. The higher it
goes up the harder it will come down and the grander will be the
divine vindication.

God will not allow sin to sneak out of the world. God will not allow
it merely to resign and quit. This shall not be a case that goes by
default because no one appears against it. God will arraign it,
handcuff it, try it, bring against it the verdict of all the good, and
then gibbet it so high up that if one half of the gibbet stood on
Mount Washington and the other on the Himalaya, it would not be any
more conspicuous.

About fifteen years ago we had in this country a most illustrious
instance of how God lets a man go on in iniquity, so that at the close
of the career his overthrow may be the more impressive, full of
warning and climacteric. First, an honest chairmaker, then an
alderman, then a member of congress, then a supervisor of a city, then
school commissioner, then state senator, then commissioner of public
works--on and up, stealing thousands of dollars here and thousands of
dollars there, until the malfeasance in office overtopped anything the
world had ever seen--making the new Court House in New York a monument
of municipal crime, and rushing the debt of the city from thirty-six
million dollars to ninety-seven millions. Now, he is at the top of
millionairedom.

Country-seat terraced and arbored and parterred clear to the water's
brink. Horses enough to stock a king's equerry. Grooms and postilions
in full rig. Wine cellars enough to make a whole legislature drunk.
New York finances and New York politics in his vest pocket. He winked,
and men in high place fell. He lifted his little finger, and
ignoramuses took important office. He whispered, and in Albany and
Was