Folks thet’s afear’d to fail are sure o’ failin’;
God hates your sneakin’ creturs thet believe
He’ll settle things they run away an’ leave.’”
There is something to be said—indeed in our present sense there is more to be said, for the farmer than for the clergyman in the story of the latter congratulating the former on the state of his crops, and finding him not free from apprehensions, in regard of former bad years—“My friend,” urged the rector, “trust in Providence.” “Providence! Yes, yes,” replied the other; “that’s all very well: but give me the doong cart.” Dr. John Brown relates with zest how one of his faculty was attending a poor woman in labour—a desperate case, that required a cool head and a firm will, while the good man, “for he was good,” had neither of these,—and losing his presence of mind, gave up the poor woman as lost, and retired into the next room to pray for her. “Another doctor, who perhaps wanted what the first one had, and certainly had what he wanted, brains and courage, meanwhile arrived, and called out, ‘Where is Dr. ⸺?’ ‘Oh, he has gone into the next room to pray.’ ‘Pray! Tell him to come here this instant, and help me; he can work and pray too;’” and by the new-comer’s, the snell working doctor’s, assistance the woman’s life was saved.
Sir Robert Peel, in his reply to certain suggestions offered by Lord Kenyon in reference to the potato-disease, coupled with the recommendation of a “special public acknowledgment of our dependence on God’s mercy in our present distressed state,” was mildly sarcastic on the seeming inconsistency of making such an acknowledgment, while at the same time leaving “in full operation the restraints which man has imposed on the import of provisions.”
Not likely to be soon forgotten, on either side the Tweed, is Lord Palmerston’s reply as Home Secretary, to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, touching the national attitude pending a visitation of Asiatic cholera. He advised them that it was better to cleanse than to fast. Let them see to purifying the foul wynds and overcrowded flats tenanted by the poor, and so get rid of “those causes and sources of contagion which, if allowed to remain, will infallibly breed pestilence, and be fruitful in death, in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united, but inactive nation.” To apply what a north country bishop says in Shakspeare:—
“The means that Heaven yields must be embraced,
And not neglected; else, if Heaven would,
And we will not, Heaven’s offer we refuse;