Was I not right then in saying that this earth is not the devil’s earth at all, but a right good earth, of God’s making and ruling, wherein no good deed will perish fruitless, but every man’s works will follow him—a right good earth, governed by a righteous Father, who, as the psalm says “is merciful,” just “because He rewards every man according to his work.” XVI. ON THE DAY OF THANKSGIVING. (Nov. 15th, 1849.) God hath visited his people.—LUKE vii. 16. WE are assembled this day to thank God solemnly for the passing away of the cholera from England; and we must surely not forget to thank Him at the same time for the passing away of the fever, which has caused so much expense, sorrow, and death among us. Now I wish to say a very few words to you on this same matter, to show you not only how to be thankful to God, but what to be thankful for. You may say: It is easy enough for us to know what to thank God for in this case. We come to thank Him, as we have just said in the public prayers, for having withdrawn this heavy visitation from us. If so, my friends, what we shall thank Him for depends on what we mean by talking of a visitation from God. Now I do not know what people may think in this parish, but I suspect that very many all over England do _not_ know what to thank God for just now; and are altogether thanking him for the wrong thing—for a thing which, very happily for them, He has _not_ done for them, and which, if He had done it for them, would have been worse for them than all the evil which ever happened to them from their youth up until now. To be plain then, many, I am afraid, are thanking God for having gone away and left them. While the cholera was here, they said that God was visiting them; and now that the cholera is over, they consider that God’s visit is over too, and are joyful and light of heart thereat. If God’s visit is over, my friends, and He is gone away from us; if He is not just as near us now as He was in the height of the cholera, the best thing we can do is to turn to Him with fasting, and weeping, and mourning, and roll ourselves in the dust, and instead of thanking our Father for going away, pray to Him, of his infinite mercy, to condescend to come back again and visit us, even though, as superstitious and ignorant men believe, God’s visiting us were sure to bring cholera, or plague, or pestilence, or famine, or some other misery. For I read, that in His presence is life and not death—at His right hand is fulness of joy, and not tribulation and mourning and woe; but if not, it were better to be with God in everlasting agony, than to be in everlasting happiness without God.