pathway of the
storms, the earthquakes, the lava floods, the drought, and the deluge?
who knows and rules their times? The fairest homesteads are made
desolate in a moment; verdant beauty as of Eden vanishes, and blasting
and burning as of Sodom reigns in its room. There are malign powers in
the universe which seem to watch all beauty and increase, that they may
make it their prey. Do not men in all ages tremble as they rejoice in
prosperity? Do not the proverbs of all nations warn us that trouble in
such moments is near? There is a hand unseen which deals destruction to
our harvests and homesteads, in the moment when they smile on us most
gaily; and we are powerless to resist it; we can but sit like Job on the
dunghill of our ruined fortunes and bemoan ourselves, and it may be
curse the day which sent us forth to till such a treacherous seed-field
as this. The dearest things, the things which we love most tenderly, the
possession of which is our life, may be struck down in a moment, the
delight of our eyes laid low at a stroke; we may plead and pray, we may
wrestle with God in a frenzy of supplication: the hand which grasps our
treasure is pitiless; pass a few days, we shall be standing tearless and
defiant by the grave of our beloved. Pagans exclaim against their gods
as treacherous, and refuse them service. Catholics revenge themselves by
cashiering their saint. Nay, the same brutal instinct may be found in
Protestant England: I have heard of a farmer, whose harvest was all
ruined, sticking a rotten sheaf in the hedge and leaving it there, to
make, as he said, God Almighty ashamed. We shudder at the blasphemy; but
it is only a coarse expression of the anguish of the helpless in the
hand of a power which seems inexorable and merciless, which crosses
their most settled purposes, destroys ruthlessly their most precious
harvests, and murders all their brightest joys. "_If the clouds be full
of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall
toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree
falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow;
and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not
what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of
her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who
maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not
thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prospe