Now take this case of the mother whose child is taken away from her, as she says. Let us see if we can find out what is really being done. It is possible, of course, that the child has inherited, it may be from a grandfather or great-grandfather, from somewhere along the line, a tendency to a particular kind of disease. It may be that, without anybody's being to blame for it or anybody's knowing it, the child was exposed to some contagious disease on the street or at school. It may be that the mother, through a little otherwise pardonable vanity, wishing to display the beauty of the child rather than to dress it in the healthiest manner, has been the means of exposing it to cold. It may be any one of a dozen things has caused the death of this child. And do you not see that in every case it has nothing whatever to do with the mother's moral goodness or spiritual cultivation? It is absurd to think that the mother, in this case, is being punished for something that she is entirely unconscious of having been guilty of. Do you not see that there is no logical connection between an inherited disease, between exposure, between taking cold, between any of these natural causes and the goodness of the mother? Is it not absurd to talk about their having anything whatever to do with each other? I remember hearing a famous revivalist preach some years ago; and in this particular sermon he represented God as using all means to try to turn such a man from his path of evil, as he regarded it, into the way of right and truth and salvation; and he said: First, perhaps, God takes his property away from him; and that does not change him. And by and by he takes his wife; and that does not change him. And then he takes one of his children; and, as he expressed it, he lays these coffins across his pathway in order to warn him of his sinful condition, and turn him into the right way. Think of a God who kills other people on account of my wrong! I had a friend in Boston once, a lady, a school-teacher, who in all seriousness told me, when her sister died, that she was afraid God had taken her sister away because she had not been sufficiently faithful in attending church services during Lent. Think of it! Not only the lack of logic in linking things like these together, but the practical impiety of attributing to God such feelings and action in regard to his dealings with his children!