In the first place, they live to demonstrate beyond all controversy the long-suffering patience of God. You sometimes say, under some great affront, "I will not stand it;" but perhaps you are compelled to stand it. God, with all the batteries of omnipotence loaded with thunderbolts, stands it century after century. I have no doubt sometimes an angel comes to Him and suggests, "Now is the time to strike." "No," says God; "wait a year, wait twenty years, wait a century, wait five centuries." What God does is not so wonderful as what He does not do. He has the reserve corps with which He could strike Mormonism and Mohammedanism and Paganism from the earth in a day. He could take all the fraud in New York on the west side of Broadway and hurl it into the Hudson, and all the fraud on the east side of Broadway and hurl it into the East River in an hour. He understands the combination lock of every dishonest money-safe, and could blow it up quicker than by any earthly explosive. Written all over the earth, written all over history are the words, "Divine forbearance, divine leniency, divine long-suffering." I wonder that God did not burn this world up two thousand years ago, scattering its ashes into immensity, its aerolites dropping into other worlds to be kept in their museums as specimens of a defunct planet. People sometimes talk of God as though He were hasty in His judgments and as though He snapped men up quick. Oh, no! He waited one hundred and twenty years for the people to get into the ark, and warned them all the time--one hundred and twenty years, then the flood came. The Anchor Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Circassia," the White Star Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Britannic," the Cunard Line gives only a month's announcement of the sailing of the "Oregon;" but of the sailing of that ship that Noah commanded God gave one hundred and twenty years' announcement and warning. Patience antediluvian, patience postdiluvian, patience in times Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, Pauline, Lutheran, Whitefieldian. Patience with men and nations. Patience with barbarisms and civilizations. Six thousand years of patience! Overtopping attribute of God, all of whose attributes are immeasurable. Why do the wicked live? That their overthrow may be the more impressive and climacteric. They must pile up their mischief until all the community shall see it, until the nation shall see it, until all the world shall see it. The higher it goes up the harder it will come down and the grander will be the divine vindication.