Morals are as necessary to larger communities as to families, or individuals, alike required of them. And they are equally amenable to HIM who is over all, and receive like returns from his impartial hands, according to their works. The chief difference made between communities and persons, respects the time and place, in which they are judged and rewarded: Respecting the former, they take place in this world; respecting the latter, in that to come. Persons will live again after death. Communities, as such, exist only here. Here therefore communities must be remunerated [sic]. They are so. God tries them, and proportions retributions to their moral state. "Righteousness exalteth a nation;" but wickedness degrades and destroys it. The strength and happiness of a people are proportioned to their morals, and increase and diminish with them. Perhaps it will be said, These are the natural conferences of moral good and evil. They are so. And these consequences are the effects of divine order; of the constitution which God hath established. Hence the divine declaration by the prophet: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my fight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said, I would benefit them." * * Jeremiah xviii. 7-10. This declaration is verified in the divine administration. God often bears with nations and communities, even to long suffering; but if they continue to revolt, he fails not to punish their sin upon them. When a community hath filled up the measure of its iniquity, judgment is executed upon it; not according to the moral character of those who then compose it, but according to its character considered as a nation which hath been tried God's appointed time.