Now what this reveals to us is the constitution of that world of human society amidst which we live. The bedrock of it, the basis of its whole constitution, is the righteousness of God and His unwavering maintenance of His moral laws. As the Psalmist says, “Clouds and darkness are round about Him,” and we cannot follow in all respects His mysterious dispensations; but one thing we know for certain, that “righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat.” All His providential government of mankind is based on the assertion of right and the punishment and repression of wrong; and, as another prophet says, when you see God’s judgments in the world you may be sure that the object of them is that the inhabitants of the world may learn righteousness. But it is of the first importance we should realize how those judgments are for the most part executed. It is not, as a rule, by the special and visible interposition of God’s hand. There have been times, indeed, as on various occasions in the history of the Jews, such as the deliverance of His people from Egypt, when God manifestly interposed, by miraculous means, to punish His enemies and to deliver His people. But for the most part, and in the general course of history, the moral and religious laws which God has established in human nature are left to work out their natural consequences, and men are punished not merely because of their sins, but by their sins, and by the working out of their sins in their lives. The explanation of the chief troubles of mankind, and in particular of the wars and sufferings which have cursed the earth from generation to generation, is contained in that statement of St. James: “From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” When the men and women of whom a nation is composed give way to those lusts of which St. James speaks, to covetousness, jealousy, sensuality, and untruthfulness, they are gradually storing up the fuel of passions for some great conflagration, which arises in the natural course of things, as the consequence of some great public injustice into which they are betrayed. They thus rouse the indignation of other people, they commit injustices which must be resisted, and then the world is convulsed in some great war like the present.