That a close connection exists between man and his dwelling place, the earth, is a truth in which both science and the Scriptures cordially concur; the dispute, if any, between them is not as to the fact, but its cause. The doctrine of evolution, which receives such wide acceptance, rests upon this connection as a fundamental axiom; and the Scriptures confirm the fact in the accounts of the creation and the fall. The difference between science and the Scriptures is, that what evolution attributes to the operation of natural law the Bible explains by the working of a moral power. As for man’s sake the ground was cursed and all nature made to suffer by reason of his rebellion, so do they bear constant witness to his advance or degeneration in righteousness. As purity is in general promotive of prosperity, so does sin produce disaster. “As the moral life of the soul expresses itself in the physical life of the body for the latter’s health or corruption, so the conduct of the human race affects the physical life of the universe to its farthest limit in space. The Old Testament is not contented with a general statement of this great principle, but pursues it to all sorts of particular and private applications. The curses of the Lord fell, not only on the sinner, but on his dwelling, his property, and even on the bit of ground he occupied. The doctrine of the Old Testament is that man’s sin has rendered necessary the destruction of his material circumstances, and that the divine judgment includes a broken and rifled universe.”¹ ¹ _Isaiah_, vol. i. chap. xxxviii, pp. 419, ff., in the _Expositor’s Bible_, New York, A. C. Armstrong & Co. And these calamities, whether brought about directly by the divine Governor, or through the operation of general laws, which is but another mode of his action, are so many trumpet calls from God warning men to retrace their erring steps and submit to his kingdom. “It was plague and fire,” Leigh Hunt says, “that first taught the Londoners to build their city better.” And the divine Being may make use of like means to forward his moral government. 1. _Natural Providences._――In the _first_ trumpet scene the blow falls upon the earth itself. Its productive resources were severely diminished through the destructive agencies of nature, intensified, it may be, by the horrors of war. The hail and the fire were mingled with blood. And, since food is essential to life, “the king himself being served by the field,” such a disaster must sorely oppress mankind. The apostle had himself witnessed at least one widely-extended famine, and had noted how the exhibition of Christian benevolence had been made the means of promoting the kingdom of Christ (Acts xi, 28‒30).