Let not the warning be addressed in vain: there are fearful points of resemblance between this country and the Jews in the darker side of their national character, when the chosen people of the Lord. We are too much disposed “to say in our hearts, my power, and the might of my hand, hath gotten me this wealth:” and there is a love of the world, which falls little short of idolatry;—there is a trusting to fortune, and an ascribing events to chance and natural causes, which almost amount to deifying fortune and nature. Let, then, all the true servants of God, by their prayers, and their labours, seek, in dependence on God’s blessing, a remedy of these great and growing evils. Let them appeal to the experience of the past; let them prove from sacred history that nations, which exalted themselves, have always been abased, which humbled themselves, have always been exalted: let them shew from our own history how we have been blessed and preserved, and how we have prospered and flourished, when our trust has been in God, who alone “IS HE THAT GIVETH STRENGTH AND POWER UNTO HIS PEOPLE: BLESSED BE GOD!” {110a} Let them bear public testimony at once to the justice and mercy of His visitations; for whilst the pestilence speaks the language of wrath: “WOE TO THE REBELLIOUS CHILDREN, SAITH THE LORD, THAT TAKE COUNSEL, BUT NOT OF ME, and that cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sin to sin:” {110b} it speaks also the language of merciful warning and gracious exhortation: “As MANY AS I LOVE, I REBUKE AND CHASTEN: BE ZEALOUS, THEREFORE, AND REPENT.” {110c}