The Cause and Cure of the Cattle Plague: A Plain Sermon

by James Galloway Cowan

Transcribed from the 1866 William Skeffington edition by David Price.

THE
CAUSE AND CURE
OF
THE CATTLE PLAGUE.

A Plain Sermon.

By JAMES GALLOWAY COWAN, M.A.,
Perpetual Curate of St. John’s, Hammersmith.

LONDON:
WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163 PICCADILLY.

1866.

A PLAIN SERMON.

Isaiah xlv., v. 5 & 7.

“I am the Lord, and there is none else. There is no God beside me . . . I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.”

That God is the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible; that He orders all things in heaven and earth according to His own will; that all parts of the universe have their origin, their functions, their capabilities from Him; that they operate or are suspended at His word; that He exalts to prosperity, and lays low in adversity; that He kills and makes alive—are truths which, asserted in a general way, I suppose all of you would readily acknowledge. But, brethren, would it not be only in this general way? In particular and individual instances of what are called nature’s operations, is not the great moving or permitting power often lost sight of, ay, and virtually denied to be at work? Much of this oversight, this practical infidelity, is due, I doubt not, to our use of the word “nature.” We talk of the law of nature, we admire and wonder at the works of nature, until we all-but deify nature, and dethrone nature’s God. Some may say that when we speak of nature we mean God. But do we? Does not the expression suggest to our minds some indescribable, some unknown essence, working in a mechanical, perfunctory, necessary, inevitable, compulsory way, more frequently than present to us any thought of the Lord Jehovah?

And not less frequently are secondary or subordinate causes so contemplated and insisted on as to exclude from our minds all consideration of the great first cause.