Why do I say these things?  To frighten you?  No, but to warn you.  When you say to yourselves,—­Earthquakes are so uncommon and so harmless in England that there is no need to think of them, you say on the whole what is true.  It has been, as yet, God’s will that earthquakes should be uncommon and slight in England; and therefore we have a reasonable ground of belief that such will be His will for the future.  Certainly He does not wish us to fold our hands, and say, there is no use in building or improving the country, if an earthquake may come and destroy it at any moment.  If there be an evil which man can neither prevent or foresee, then, if he be a wise man, he will go on as if that evil would never happen.  We ever must work on in hope and in faith in God’s goodness, without tormenting and weakening ourselves by fears about what may happen.

But when God gives to a whole country a distinct and solemn warning, especially after giving that country an enormous bounty in an abundant harvest, He surely means that country to take the warning.  And, if I dare so judge, He means us perhaps to think of the earthquake, and somewhat in this way.

There is hardly any country in the world in which man’s labour has been so successful as in England.  Owing to our having no earthquakes, no really destructive storms,—­and, thank God, no foreign invading armies,—­the wealth of England has gone on increasing steadily and surely for centuries past, to a degree unexampled.  We have never had to rebuild whole towns after an earthquake.  We have never seen (except in small patches) whole districts of fertile land ruined by the sea or by floods.  We have never seen every mill and house in a country blown down by a hurricane, and the crops mown off the ground by the mere force of the wind, as has happened again and again in our West India Islands.  Most blessed of all, we have never seen a foreign army burning our villages, sacking our towns, carrying off our corn and cattle, and driving us into the woods to starve.  From all these horrors, which have, one or other of them, fallen on almost every nation upon earth, God has of His great mercy preserved us.  Ours is not the common lot of humanity.  We English do not know the sorrows which average men and women go through, and have been going through, alas! ever since Adam fell.  We have been an exception, a favoured and peculiar people, allowed to thrive and fatten quietly and safely for hundreds of years.

But what if that very security tempts us to forget God?  Is it not so?  Are we not—­I am sure I am—­too apt to take God’s blessings for granted, without thanking Him for them, or remembering really that He gave them, and that He can take them away?  Do we not take good fortune for granted?  Do we not take for granted that if we build a house it will endure for ever; that if we buy a piece of land it will be called by our name long years hence; that if we amass wealth we shall hand it down safely to our children?  Of course we think we shall prosper.  We say to ourselves, To-morrow shall be as to-day, and yet more abundant.