could strike Mormonism and Mohammedanism and Paganism from the earth in a day.  He could take all the fraud in New York on the west side of Broadway and hurl it into the Hudson, and all the fraud on the east side of Broadway and hurl it into the East River in an hour.  He understands the combination lock of every dishonest money-safe, and could blow it up quicker than by any earthly explosive.  Written all over the earth, written all over history are the words, “Divine forbearance, divine leniency, divine long-suffering.”

I wonder that God did not burn this world up two thousand years ago, scattering its ashes into immensity, its aerolites dropping into other worlds to be kept in their museums as specimens of a defunct planet.  People sometimes talk of God as though He were hasty in His judgments and as though He snapped men up quick.  Oh, no!  He waited one hundred and twenty years for the people to get into the ark, and warned them all the time—­one hundred and twenty years, then the flood came.  The Anchor Line gives only a month’s announcement of the sailing of the “Circassia,” the White Star Line gives only a month’s announcement of the sailing of 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.