There was deadly danger in that murmuring of the children of Israel. You must not imagine that God resented it because of the insult to His dignity. God is above such a feeling as that, He does not resent the ignorance, with the mixture of superstition, that goes into the lives, ay, of good men and women, Protestant or Roman Catholic. He takes men's hearts and their real life. It was not the insult to Him in their murmurs that made Him deal with them so strongly. Oh, it was not sternness at all that dealt with them, it was love unutterable! They were ready to spoil their lives, to rush away on their own plans to make their fortunes, and so to bring themselves to ruin. Do you know how God checked them? They were complaining of the food that they had, and of their long weary marches, and the heartlessness of their toil in the wilderness, instead of having comfortable homes and rich farms, and God cured them by sending among them fiery serpents that bit them, filled their veins with venom, agony, and death, and as they lay there writhing in pain with death looking into their eyes they said, "What fools we were to repine and complain because of the bread that was tasteless and the life that was void of interest." That was God's way of curing men who were about to spoil their lives by discontent. Is it not God's way still? You men sitting there, do you remember that for years you had been bad-hearted, bitter, discontented, because your life was not great or famous, till God sent that deadly illness and you lay in bed like to die, and then you would have given all you had to get back to that life that you thought so little of? I have seen the father who made the foolish mistake of harping too much on the faults and failings of those who dwelt in his home, not acknowledging the large amount of good and obedience, but ever making misery and bitterness there, and thinking himself justified in doing it, accounting himself an unappreciated, unrewarded man, till a day came when God sent a fiery serpent into his heart, when the blinds were drawn down in that house, and a life lay still and silent that had had faults, but had been sweet, and loving, and lovable. Or, a real disgrace has come to a home, and a child has done a deed that might break a father's heart. Oh, the misery and the pity of it, to see that man sitting there all alone with his head bent and his face buried in his hands, thinking of the years that might have been bright with joy, and love, and cheer, and that he in his madness had made bad and bitter! Ay, it was a fiery serpent, but it was effective. Yet God's heart shrinks from those sharp penalties that come to cure us of our sins. See, what happened the instant those Israelites returned to Him, ignominiously crying to the very Moses, and the very God, they had cast off and grumbled at, to come and save them.