Arkansas weekly mansion., 1884-04-12
Farrar on the Nations Curse.

1t is not in the thunder. it is by the
still small voice of history and expert
ence, that God speaks to the reason and
conscience. 1t is not by the lightning
flash that He would have us read His
will. but by the quiet light that shows all
things in the slow history of their ripen-
ing. When He speaks in the thunder
and the lightning. by the tornado and
the earthquake, He speaks re:riburlon
then. And what is retribution but the
eternal law of consequences? If you
can not see Gods warning against
drink; if you can not read, in the exist
ing condition of things, His displeasure
and our shame; if you can not see it in
the marriage tie broken and dishonored,
in sons and daughters ruined, in the
peace of families laid waste, in the work
of the church hindered, in whole dis
tricts biighted, in thousands and tens of
thousands souls destroyed; if you can
not see it in the records of crime, and
murder, and Il: n:adness, and suicide; the
fathers who, in their very mouths,
through drink. have slain their sons
who, through drink, have sla; their
fathers, and the mothers, who, for drink,
have sacrificed the Ives of all their lit
tie ones upon the breast-men of En-
gland, if these things do not wiring
your heart and fire your zeal, what do
you expect9 Can the letters glow more
plainly on the palace wall of your
power? Are you waiting till there falls
on England the same fate which, for
their sins, has fallen in turn on As
syria, and Greece, and Rome. and
Egypt, and Carthage, and Jerusalem,
and Tyre? They pcrished; sooner or
later all guilty nations perish by sudden
catastrophe, or by slow decay. 1.-The
sword of Heaven is not in haste to
smite, nor yet doth linger;" but when
it does smite, it is apt to smite once,
and smite no more; will you be SO
cOmplacent over your epiGrams, and
your vested interests. and your Bible
criticisms, when vengeance leaps at
last upon the stage. and strikes sore
strokes, and pity shall TO more avert
the blow? You are Christians; yes, but
see that you have not been admitted
into holier sanctuary only to commit
a deeper sacrilege! Why, had you
been Pagans, these very same argu-
mcnts ought to be irresistible to you!
To millions of Pagans they have been
so. The sobriety of China wns due to
Confucius. The sobr.ety of India and
of Burma are due to Buddha. /
am Mortified to read that in contact
with us in the last three years the
sale of drink in India has increased
tnrty-six per cent. in Burma, seventy
four per cent. The sobriety of vast
regions of.As'a and Africa was due to
Mahomct In the day Of judgment,
shall not Confucians, shall not Bud
dhists, shall not Mohamedans, rise up
in judgment against this generation and
condemn it., for they abstained from
strong drink at the bidding of Con-
fucus, Buddha and Mahomet and behold
a Greater than these is here? All, if the
voice of all these tempted, suffering, per-
ishing, m scrablc souls be nothing to
YOU if the voice of YOUR country be
nothing to you-yet. if you be Chris
tians, listen to the voice of Christ,
pleading with YOU in the pathetic ac-
cents of myriads of the little ones that
it is not His will, that it is utterly
against His will, that His cross and
passoin be thus rendered of none effect
for multitudes for the very least of
whom Christ died. If thou forhear to
deliver them that are drawn unto death,
- 'i'->an ,.h1 are ,,nadv to he Slain; II
(when now. at any rate, we have no eN-
cuse for not knowing, it, ''dOth not
He that pondereth the heart consider
it? And He that kecpeth thy soul, doth
He not know it2 And shall not He render
to every man according to his work."