_I sent among you a pestilence by way of Egypt:_[295] _I slew with the sword your youths--besides the capture of your horses--and I brought up the stench of your camps to your nostrils--yet ye did not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._ _I overturned among you, like God's own overturning of Sodom and Gomorrah, till ye became as a brand plucked from the burning--yet ye did not return to Me: oracle of Jehovah._ This recalls a passage in that English poem of which we are again and again reminded by the Book of Amos, _The Vision of Piers Plowman_. It is the sermon of Reason in Passus V. (Skeat's edition):-- "He preved that thise pestilences · were for pure synne, And the southwest wynde · in saterday et evene Was pertliche[296] for pure pride · and for no poynt elles. Piries and plomtrees · were puffed to the erthe, In ensample ze segges[297] · ze shulden do the bettere. Beches and brode okes · were blowen to the grounde. Torned upward her tailles · in tokenynge of drede, That dedly synne at domesday · shal fordon[298] hem alle." In the ancient world it was a settled belief that natural calamities like these were the effects of the deity's wrath. When Israel suffers from them the prophets take for granted that they are for the people's punishment. I have elsewhere shown how the climate of Palestine lent itself to these convictions; in this respect the Book of Deuteronomy contrasts it with the climate of Egypt.[299] And although some, perhaps rightly, have scoffed at the exaggerated form of the belief, that God is angry with the sons of men every time drought or floods happen, yet the instinct is sound which in all ages has led religious people to feel that such things are inflicted for moral purposes. In the economy of the universe there may be ends of a purely physical kind served by such disasters, apart altogether from their meaning to man. But man at least learns from them that nature does not exist solely for feeding, clothing and keeping him wealthy; nor is it anything else than his monotheism, his faith in God as the Lord both of his moral life and of nature, which moves him to believe, as Hebrew prophets taught and as our early English seer heard Reason herself preach. Amos had the more need to explain those disasters as the work of the God of righteousness, because his contemporaries, while willing to grant Jehovah leadership in war, were tempted to attribute to the Canaanite gods of the land all power over the seasons.