God grant that we, who have just seen the most cunningly organized and daintily bedizened specimen of a world, which ever flaunted on the earth since men began to build their towers of Babel, collapse and crumble at a single blow, may take God's hint, that the fashion of this world passeth away. Let the idle, the frivolous, the sensual, and those who, like Figaro's Marquis, have earned all earthly happiness by only taking the trouble to be born--let them look back on this last awful Christmas-tide, and hear, speaking in fact unmistakeable, the voice of the Lord. Think ye that they whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, "Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." There are those who will hear such words with a smile, even with a sneer, and say, Such wholesale judgments of God, even granting that there are such things, are, after all, very rare: it is very seldom that a whole class, a whole system of society, is punished in mass--and why then need we trouble ourselves about so remote a probability? Then know this--that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so surely is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably punish itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others, who depend on us, will indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery. Do we squander our money? Then our children and our servants will squander our money for us. Do we?--but what use to go on reminding men of truths which no one believes, because they are too painful and searching to be believed in comfort? What use to tell men what they never will confess to be true-- that by every crime, folly, even neglect of theirs, they drive a thorn into their own flesh, which will trouble them for years to come, it may be to their dying day? And yet so it is. Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. As those who neglect their fellow-creatures will discover, by the most patent undeniable proofs, in that last great day, when the rich and poor shall meet together, and then, at least, discover that the Lord is the maker of them all. Footnotes: {1} These sermons by the Rev. Charles Kingsley M.A., late rector of Eversley and Canon of Westminster, were edited by the Rev. W. Harrison, M.A., rector of Brington.--DP.