Now, what does the Bible mean by a curse, and cursing?—­For we are bound to believe, in all fairness, that the Reformers meant the same, and neither more nor less.  The text, I think, tells us plainly enough.  We know that its words came true.  We know that the Jews did perish out of their native land, as the Author of this book foretold, in consequence of doing that against which Moses warned them.  We know also that they did not perish by any miraculous intervention of Providence:  but simply as any other nation would have perished; by profligacy, internal weakness, civil war, and, at last, by foreign conquest.

We know that their destruction was the natural consequence of their own folly.  Why are we to suppose that the prophet meant anything but that?  He foretells the result.  Why are we to suppose that he did not foresee the means by which that result would happen?  Why are we, in the name of all justice, to impute to him an expectation of miraculous interferences, about which he says no word?  The curse which he foretold was the natural consequence of the sins of the nation.  Why are we not to believe that he considered it as such?  Why are we not to believe that the Bible meaning of a curse, is simply the natural ill-consequence of men’s own ill-actions?  I believe that if you will apply the same rule to other places of Scripture, you will have reason to reverence the letter and the Spirit of Scripture more and more, and will free your minds from many a superstitious and magical fancy, which will prevent you alike from understanding the Bible and the Commination Service.

The Book of Deuteronomy, like the rest of Moses’ laws, says nothing whatever about the life to come.  It says, that sin is to be punished, and virtue rewarded, in this life; and the Commination Service, when it quotes the Book of Deuteronomy, means so, so I presume, likewise.  Indeed, if we look at the very remarkable, and most invaluable address which the Commination Service contains, we shall find its author saying the same thing, in the very passages which are to some minds most offensive.

For even in this life the door of mercy may be shut, and we may cry in vain for mercy, when it is the time for justice.  This is not merely a doctrine:  it is a fact; a common, patent fact.  Men do wrong, and escape, again and again, the just punishment of their deeds; but how often there are cases in which a man does not escape; when he is filled with the fruit of his own devices, and left to the misery which he has earned; when the covetous and dishonest man ruins himself past all recovery; when the profligate is left in a shameful old age, with worn-out body and defiled mind, to rot into an unhonoured grave; when the hypocrite who has tampered with his conscience is left without any conscience at all.

They have chosen the curse, and the curse is come upon them to the uttermost.  So it is.  Is the Commination service uncharitable, is the preacher uncharitable, when they tell men so?  No more so, than the physician is uncharitable, when he says,—­’If you go on misusing thus your lungs, or your digestion, you will ruin them past all cure.’  Is God to be blamed because this is a fact?  Why then because the other is a fact likewise?