Curiosities of Heat

by Lyman Beecher Tefft

MANAGEMENT AND SOURCES OF HEAT.

hile the lessons which have been reported were going on, the religious interest in the church was deepening. Mr. Wilton did not cease to make his sermons instructive, but, in addition to the instruction, he made them more and more pungent and persuasive. He aimed to gather up the impressions and convictions already wrought in the minds of his hearers and combine them for united and immediate effect. He believed that this was to be a reaping-time.

Mr. Hume was becoming interested, not because he had been at church, for he had not been there, but the Holy Spirit of God was working upon his heart. He was becoming uneasy in his unbelief. For some reason, he knew not why, his opinions were becoming more and more unsettled. He did not like to go to the house of God; his self-will and pride of consistency rebelled against the thought of hearing and believing the gospel; but he was restless and discontented away from the place of worship. His associations with his infidel comrades grew distasteful. His Sundays were days of distress: with his attention relieved from business cares, thoughts of God and eternity pressed upon him, and he could not escape them. At length he determined to go and hear Mr. Wilton again: perhaps he should hear something which he could so positively reject as to set his mind at rest. He went, accordingly, the next Lord’s Day, and heard a very impressive sermon.

The text for the forenoon was Ps. lxvi. 5: “Come and see the works of God: he is terrible in his doing toward the children of men.” The sermon gave first a brief and rapid review of some striking displays of God’s displeasure at the sins of men: that ancient world of men whose “thoughts were only evil continually” he overwhelmed with the flood; he burned with fire from heaven Sodom and Gomorrah, Zeboim and Admah, those lascivious and festering cities of the plain; he sent his torturing and consuming plagues upon the Egyptians, and sunk the army of Pharoah like a stone in the deep waters of the Red Sea: “they sank as lead in the mighty waters;” he caused the earth to open and receive Korah and his adherents, and bade his angel in “one night” to touch with death the thousands of Sennacherib’s army. This record of divine wrath against evil-doers has startled the consciences of wicked men, and will continue to startle them so long as the ungodly live upon the earth. It is easy for unbelievers to call the word of God a record of fabulous wonders, but that record lives and will live, and its words assert their divinity by touching and burning the consciences of men as if they were tongues of fire.

“But to the thoughtful man,” said Mr. Wilton, “there is a manifestation of God’s displeasure at sin even more impressive than these miraculous judgments. The Creator has built his wrath against sin into the very fabric of the universe; he has written it upon the very atoms and elements of matter and of mind, and graved it upon the ‘nature of things.’ The forces of Nature are all instinct with holy wrath against ungodliness. Evil doing works out evil consequences by the regular course of nature. Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre were great and prosperous, and as mighty in wickedness as in commerce and war. In the height of their prosperity God denounced upon them disaster and desolation, and by the natural processes of evil their decay and destruction came upon them. No miracle broke the harmony of their mighty march to decay and the silence of death. Great nations have perished, but not till they became corrupt. Rome fell, but luxury first gendered luxuriant vices, and vices enervated her hardihood and undermined the defences of her courage. No righteous nation ever perished. No nation ever fell into decay till ripe in sin and ready for moral putrefaction. But against wicked and corrupt nations wars and desolations are determined, and the end thereof is with a flood. The very forces of Nature seem allied in firm compact with the laws of God, ready with resistless hand to avenge their transgression and to visit evil upon evil-doers. This steady march of all the forces of the world in bringing decay and wretchedness upon sinners is more impressive than any single desultory example of avenging wrath.

“But perhaps an unbeliever replies, ‘Not so; there is a natural law of development, decay, and death, apart from sin. Trees grow up, become old, and die. Men pass from childhood up to manhood, and from manhood down to second childhood, and return to the dust whence they came. By a like principle, nations pass through similar changes of development, decay, and desolation. But in all this there is no manifestation of divine favor or disfavor.’

“This is narrow and false reasoning. If a single great city had become corrupt while all the world beside remained righteous, and God had denounced his displeasure upon it and had executed his wrath by sudden and tremendous judgment, that one city standing out in single and solitary ungodliness and desolation, who would deny, who could deny, that the fate of that unhappy city was a manifestation of divine displeasure? If a second example were made of a second ungodly city, would the expression of divine wrath be weakened? Nay; every man would say that it is made stronger. What if a third example be made of a third city? What if every wicked city is made an example? What if God embody his displeasure at evil-doing in the structure of the world, and give to the very atoms of matter and the elements of mind such natures that by the working of their own proper forces, without a miracle, they shall bring pain and evil, decay and death, upon the ungodly? What is this but writing his wrath against sin upon the earth and sky, upon matter and the consciences of men, declaring by this that till the heavens and the earth and the spirits of men be no more he will never withdraw his indignation? This is what God has done. The wicked man sets in motion the machinery which works out his own everlasting undoing. His own hand sows the seeds of death, and as those seeds germinate they strike their roots into his corruptions and draw their nourishment from his evil life. Thus do sinners go on ‘treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgments of God.’

“But remember that God has not left the world in these later ages without the testimony of wrathful judgments which ought to startle and alarm the consciences of the wicked like the fires of Sodom. Let me give you what I suppose to be a true record of the fate which befell a band of bold blasphemers. In that uprising of infidelity which took place near the close of the last century there was formed at Newburg, N. Y., through the influence of a man known as ‘Blind Palmer,’ an association of infidels under the name of the Druidical Society. The object of the society was to uproot and destroy revealed religion. In pursuit of this object they descended to the most blasphemous mockery. At one of their meetings they burned the Bible, baptized a cat, partook of the bread and wine as appointed for the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, and gave the elements to a dog. Then the wrath of God broke out upon them. ‘On the evening of that very day he who had administered the mock sacrament was attacked with a violent inflammatory disease; his inflamed eyeballs were protruded from their sockets; his tongue was swollen, and he died before morning in great bodily and mental agony. Dr. H——, another of the same party, was found dead in his bed the next morning. D—— D——, a printer who was present, three days after fell in a fit, and died immediately. In a few days three others were drowned. Within five years from the time the Druidical Society was organized all the thirty-six original members—actors in the blasphemous ceremonies spoken of—died in some strange or unnatural manner. Two were starved to death, seven were drowned, eight were shot, five committed suicide, seven died on the gallows, one was frozen to death, and three died, the record says, accidentally.’ Be sure of this: God has not left the world nor forgotten his judgments against his enemies, neither is he tied up and hampered by the laws of Nature. ‘God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword: he hath bent his bow and made it ready. He hath also prepared for him the instruments of death.’

“But remember, also, that God does not limit his expression of wrath to these natural agencies. The smile of God beams direct upon the soul as the warm rays of the sun fall upon the cold earth, and the frown of God throws a shadow which darkens the soul with the gloom of eternal death.”