(2765)
RETRIBUTION IN THE INDIVIDUAL
What is true of the mass is first true of the atom; what is true of the ocean is first true of the drop. It is easy to see the law of retribution when it is exemplified in the broad effects of national calamity, but not so easy to apprehend its action in the individual fortune. We stand in awe over the shattered greatness and buried splendor of Egypt, Babylon, Judea, Phoenicia, Greece; but the ruin that sin works in the individual destiny is just as certain, and infinitely more awful. If we could once see a soul in ruins, we should never speak again of Nineveh, Memphis, Jerusalem, Tyre, Athens. “Deceive not yourselves.” (Text.)—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(2766)
RETRIBUTION INEVITABLE
With great injustice and cruelty the French drove out the Huguenots, but in expelling these sons of faith, genius, industry, virtue, the French fatally impoverished their national life, and they are suffering to-day from these missing elements which none may restore. It is impossible for a people to increase in material wealth and political consideration while its true grandeur, its greatness of soul, is gradually passing away. Very strange and subtle are the causes of the decay of nations, and little by little, quite unconsciously, does a people lose the great qualities which made it. Poets lose their fire, artists their imagination, merchants their enterprise, statesmen their sagacity, soldiers their heroism, the people their self-control; literature becomes commonplace, art lifeless, great men dwindle into mediocrities, good men perish from the land, and the glory of a nation departs, leaving only a shell, a shadow, a memory. Retribution may not come suddenly, but it will come.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(2767)
Retribution, Just—See [Responsibility Evaded].
RETRIBUTION, THE LAW OF
For centuries did the kings and nobles of France oppress the peasantry. It is impossible for us to think adequately of the vast, hopeless wretchedness of the people from the cradle to the grave. When Louis XVI came to the throne it seemed incredible that the long-suffering people would ever avenge themselves upon the powerful classes by whom they were ground to the dust, and yet by a marvelous series of events the “wounded men” arose in awful wrath, burning palaces with fire and trampling greatness under foot. “Pierced through” were those hungry, hopeless millions; but the day of doom came, and every bleeding wretch arose invincible with torch and sword.—W. L. Watkinson, “The Transfigured Sackcloth.”