1. War. This, howsoever necessary and inevitable it may often be, is always to be esteemed a great evil; if we advert, either to its origination or its effects; and nothing can justify its exertions, but the laws of self-preservation. The sin of man first gave it an existence; and the same bitter cause continues it to this day. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even from your lusts?” James, iv. 1. Tyrannical passions predominating in the mind, give birth to those sanguinary schemes, which, when pursued, produce every species of confusion and death. If we examine carefully, from whence all those scenes of devastation have arisen, that have deluged the world with blood, we shall find, that, in general, they have sprung from unbounded ambition, avarice, pride, or resentment. And multitudes of tyrants, as well as factious confederates in usurpation and rebellion, have never been able, in thousands of cases, to assign any other reason for their enterprises in blood and slaughter, but this; that the one could not bear an equal, nor the other a superior; or those had too little, and these not enough. While, to foment the dreadful quarrel, the lust of revenge and rebellion operates like oil poured on the flame. Thus nations begin and carry on war, until they are tired of worrying and killing one another; and when the consequences of this horrid work are weighed in the balance of humanity and reason, many a conqueror may sit down and weep over his victories, when he reflects that they have been purchased at the expense of the blood of thousands of his fellow-creatures. And he who could contemplate such victories with pride or pleasure, unmixed with remorse and compassion for the sorrow, the ruin, the desolation they have caused, is a desperate character, that, one would hope, can meet with a parallel, only in
“Macedonia’s madman and the Swede.”
What desolations have been made in the earth by war, the history of former and latter ages informs us; and, God knoweth, we need no comment on the awful truth. What we want principally, is to be humbled under the visitation; to “hear the rod, and Him that appointed it.” For, we are sure the matter is not fortuitous. If the sword be drawn, it is because God hath said, “Sword go through this land.” Or, if it continue unsheathed, it is because he hath said also, “O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. How can it be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge?” Jer. xlvii. 6, 7. Or, if wide-extended destruction mark its progress, it is because, “Thus saith the Lord, A sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished; it is sharpened to make a sore slaughter; should we then make mirth? The sword is sharpened, to give it into the hand of the slayer. I Jehovah have set the point of the sword against all their gates, that their hearts may faint, and their ruins be multiplied.” Ezek. xxi. 9–11, 15.
These awful passages intimate, that it is an act of justice in God, to appoint that evil, into which men’s inordinate passions precipitate them: and it may turn out an act of mercy too, if they see their sin in their punishment, and get sick of both. Otherwise additional expedients may be adopted, and increasing judgments be sent. For, the Lord hath at his command the
2. Pestilence. When David, for his sin in numbering the people of Israel, had proposed to him his choice of three modes of punishment, and he preferred falling into the hand of the Lord, for very great were his mercies, and not into the hand of man, whose tender mercies, often, are cruel; “the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel, and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.” 1 Chron. xxi. 12–14. This sore visitation, which sin brought upon David and his people, was often repeated among the other judgments which desolated Israel. See Lev. xxvi. 25. Psal. lxxviii. 50. Jer. xliv. 13. It is mentioned as one of the ominous antecedents of the day of judgment, that “there shall be pestilence in divers places.” Mat. xxiv. 7. And in that inimitable piece of sublime description in Habak. iii. where all nature is represented as convulsed and shrinking to nothing, under impressions of the indignation and grandeur of God, “before him,” it is said, “went the pestilence:” verse 5. Because of the secret manner in which this fearful visitant performs his work, the Psalmist saith, “the pestilence walketh in darkness.” Psal. xci. 6. He enters silently and secretly as the thief, and imperceptibly yet rapidly executes his commission. There is often no security against its approach, since the air we breathe wafts the deadly contagion to all the senses, which, in a moment, convey them to, and, in conveying, contaminate the whole mass of blood. Thousands imbibe the poison, and fall in agonies under the stroke. The bolted door is no barrier against its intrusion; the power of medicine no antidote to the noisome malady. Thousands and tens of thousands fall on the right hand and on the left; and it has been known that this sweeping scourge has often swelled the bills of mortality more in a few weeks, than the whole train of common diseases have in as many years. Never do death’s arrows fly so thick or so envenomed, as when he fills his quiver with the plague; and never is the grave so crowded with dead, as when the pestilence waiteth at its gates. Though the land before it should resemble the garden of Eden, yet behind it the scene will be like a desolate wilderness. And were it not for that hand, which guides its progress, and limits its commission, nothing but rapid desolation and destruction would ensue; especially if we consider, that there follows close at his heels,
3. Famine. As bread is the staff of life, if the prop be removed, the constitution must necessarily fall. The vitals deprived of their wonted nutriment, must languish and die, under one of the most painful and insatiate sensations of nature. As famine is an evil in effect, the causes which produce it may be various. The spread of war, the want, or excess of rain, parching or vitiating the fruits of the earth, great inundations, blasting and mildew, long sieges, intense heat, a long frost or multitudes of devouring insects, locusts in particular, called by one of the prophets, “God’s army,” may, and often have, in their turns, introduced the plague of famine. But who can describe, or bear a description of such scenes as those which mark the effects of this pale visitant! when, as in Samaria’s siege, those things which the stomach would nauseate the very mention of, in a time of plenty, are coveted as food, when the unhappy sufferers have been driven to the horrid necessity of turning cannibals, and casting lots for each others’ persons, till at last a want of every resource brings death, and closes the ghastly scene. A visitation this, one would think, sufficient to alarm and reform a careless people; and yet it is recorded, as an astonishing instance of stupidity and hardness of heart in Israel, that when God “gave them cleanness of teeth in all their cities, and want of bread in all their places, they returned not” unto him that smote them. Amos, iv. 6. So that divine justice was obliged to repeat the stroke, by that, which is of all others the most tremendous visitation of Jehovah, the
4. Earthquake. Of all judicial dispensations, that which appoints the earthquake, is the most terribly vindictive; when the earth, thrown into dreadful concussions, cracks and opens like the gaping grave, or heaves and swells like the agitated ocean. Even the sword, the pestilence, and the famine, are mild in their effects, and slow in their progress, when compared with the earthquake. It often gives no warning, but overwhelms in a moment. Its subterraneous motions tear the bowels of the earth, and make its solid pillars bend, like a reed shaken with the wind; while the sound of thunder from beneath, and the crash of falling structures from above, are often heard at the same instant. A few minutes put a period to the works of ages; to wisdom’s archives; to all the boasted monuments of conquest and of fame; to all the pageantry of the great, and all the hoarded riches of the wealthy; to all the illicit pleasures of the licentious, and all the busy schemes of the proud or factious contending for sway. The loftiest towers, the strongest rocks, afford no hiding-place from its fury, but often increase the ruin. Nor is there any security in flight; since in the open field or spacious plain, a yawning gulf may open and devour multitudes in an instant, or jam them between the closing earth.
“Tremendous issue! to the sable deep,
Thousands descend in business, or asleep.”
To the desolations which this messenger of Almighty vengeance has spread through the earth, let Lima, Callao, Catania, Jamaica, Lisbon, bear witness. In the last place, soon after the dreadful visitation which, in 1755, disturbed the procession of the cursed Auto de fe, and shook the foundations of that bloody tribunal, which Popish barbarity and superstition had set up; the king of Portugal represented his distresses to the king of Spain in a letter, in which was the following affecting passage:—“I am without a house, living in a tent; without subjects, without servants, without money, and without bread.” How humiliating the stroke, which reduces royalty to the dust, or brings all the dignity of crowned heads to a level with the common beggar! Such, but accompanied with circumstances infinitely more terrible and abasing, will that final catastrophe be, when “the Lord shall arise to shake terribly the earth; when it shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it, and it shall fall and not rise again;” Isa. xxiv. 20; when “the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low, and they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty.” Isa. ii. 17, 19.
The quiver of Jehovah is not yet exhausted, though we take into our account the ravages of war, the desolation of famine, the fatal effects of the noisome pestilence, or the overwhelming fury of the earthquake. When he “opens his armoury, he can bring forth” innumerable “weapons of his indignation.” Jer. l. 25. He can execute his tremendous purposes by “fire and hail, snow and vapor.” Psal. cxlviii. 8, or “fulfil his word” of threatening and promise, by