Here are we, for instance, visited with a grievous plague among our herds and flocks. Every one feels some measure of the calamity. All are alive to the necessity of prompt and great efforts to stay the progress of and cure the murrain. There are hundreds of sage suggestions as to the origin of such things; every conceivable precaution and pains is taken to prevent the communication of them, to remove local provocations and incentives, to discover remedies and cures. But who says or imagines “The hand of the Lord hath wrought this”? Who exhorts, “Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He hath torn and He will heal us”? I am not making this appeal to encourage disregard of natural causes and influences. These being the agents and instruments which God uses for or against us, which he requires us to foster if they are good, to remove if they are bad, it would be desperate folly, and most provoking sin, to disregard them. By all means let men follow on as they have begun, in scientific inquiry, sanitary precaution and improvement, and the like; but, besides, let them do what hitherto they do not seem to have done at all sufficiently, namely, recognise and acknowledge the hand of the Lord in these plagues. But you will say “Have they not done this? Is not our presence here to-day a proof that we, at least, have done it? Are there not thousands and thousands in the land who will assemble as we have done, if their pastors invite them? Has there been any objection to, has there not been loud approval of, the special Collect which the authorities in Church and State have appointed for daily use—is not that Collect itself an acknowledgment, and a discerning acknowledgment, that the Lord has sent the murrain among us?”