It would have been wiser, surely, in those Gadarenes, and better for them, had they cried—­’Lord, what wilt Thou have us to do?  We see that Thou art a Being of infinite power, for mercy, and for punishment likewise.  And Thou art the very Being whom we want, to teach us our duty, and to make us do it.  Tell us what we ought to do, and help us, and, if need be, compel us to do it, and so to prosper indeed.’  And so should we pray in the case of this cholera.  We may ask God to take it away:  but we are bound to ask God also, why He has sent it.  Till then we have no reason to suppose that He will take it away; we have no reason to suppose that it will be merciful in Him to take it away, till He has taught us why it was sent.  This question of cholera has come now to a crisis, in which we must either learn why cholera comes, or incur, I hold, lasting disgrace and guilt.  And—­if I may dare to hint at the counsels of God—­it seems as if the Almighty Lord had no mind to relieve us of that disgrace and guilt.

For months past we have been praying that this cholera should not enter England, and our prayers have not been heard.  In spite of them the cholera has come; and has slain thousands, and seems likely to slay thousands more.  What plainer proof can there be to those who believe in the providence of God, and the rule of Jesus Christ our Lord, than that we are meant to learn some wholesome lesson from it, which we have not learnt yet?  It cannot be that God means us to learn the physical cause of cholera, for that we have known these twenty years.  Foul lodging, foul food, and, above all, natural and physical, foul water; there is no doubt of the cause.  But why cannot we save English people from the curse and destruction which all this foulness brings?  That is the question.  That is our national scandal, shame, and sin at this moment.  Perhaps the Lord wills that we should learn that; learn what is the moral and spiritual cause of our own miserable weakness, negligence, hardness of heart, which, sinning against light and knowledge, has caused the death of thousands of innocent souls.  God grant that we may learn that lesson.  God grant that He may put into the hearts and minds of some man or men, the wisdom and courage to deliver us from such scandals for the future.

But I have little hope that that will happen, till we get rid of our secret atheism; till we give up the notion that God only visits now and then, to disorder and destroy His own handiwork, and take back the old scriptural notion, that God is visiting all day long for ever, to give order and life to His own work, to set it right whenever it goes wrong, and re-create it whenever it decays.  Till then we can expect only explanations of cholera and of God’s other visitations of affliction, which are so superstitious, so irrational, so little connected with the matter in hand, that they would be ridiculous, were they not somewhat blasphemous.  But when men arise