Oh let the nations rejoice and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth.
Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.
[A] With all who died in Faith, not having received the Promises, nor—according to your modern teachers—ever to receive.
[B] Hence to the end the text is that read in termination of the lecture on its second delivery, only with an added word or two of comment on Proverbs xvii.
[C] 'The Conservation of Energy.' King and Co., 1873.
[D] Written under the impression that the lurid and prolonged sunsets of last autumn had been proved to be connected with the flight of volcanic ashes. This has been since, I hear, disproved again. Whatever their cause, those sunsets were, in the sense in which I myself use the word, altogether 'unnatural' and terrific: but they have no connection with the far more fearful, because protracted and increasing, power of the Plague-wind. The letter from White's 'History of Selborne,' quoted by the Rev. W. R. Andrews in his letter to the 'Times,' (dated January 8th) seems to describe aspects of the sky like these of 1883, just a hundred years before, in 1783: and also some of the circumstances noted, especially the variation of the wind to all quarters without alteration in the air, correspond with the character of the plague-wind; but the fog of 1783 made the sun dark, with iron-colored rays—not pale, with blanching rays. I subjoin Mr. Andrews' letter, extremely valuable in its collation of the records of simultaneous volcanic phenomena; praying the reader also to observe the instantaneous acknowledgment, by the true 'Naturalist,' of horror in the violation of beneficent natural law.
"The Recent Sunsets and Volcanic Eruptions.
"Sir,—It may, perhaps, be interesting at the present time, when so much attention has been given to the late brilliant sunsets and sunrises, to be reminded that almost identically the same appearances were observed just a hundred years ago.
Gilbert White writes in the year 1783, in his 109th letter, published in his 'Natural History of Selborne':—
'The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunderstorms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze or smoky fog that prevailed for many weeks in this island and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man. By my journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June 23d to July 20th inclusive, during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air. The sun at noon looked as black as a clouded moon, and shed a ferruginous light on the ground and floors of rooms, but was particularly lurid and blood-colored at rising and setting. The country people began to look with a superstitious awe at the red lowering aspect of the sun; and, indeed, there was reason for the most enlightened person to be apprehensive, for all the while Calabria and part of the Isle of Sicily were torn and convulsed with earthquakes, and about that juncture a volcano sprang out of the sea on the coast of Norway.'
Other writers also mention volcanic disturbances in this same year, 1783. We are told by Lyell and Geikie, that there were great volcanic eruptions in and near Iceland. A submarine volcano burst forth in the sea, thirty miles southwest of Iceland, which ejected so much pumice that the ocean was covered with this substance, to the distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in their course; and a new island was formed, from which fire and smoke and pumice were emitted.