USA > Virginia > City of Norfolk > City of Norfolk > The pestilence-God's messenger and teacher : discourse in behalf of the sufferers of Norfolk and Portsmouth, Va., delivered in Trinity Church, Washington, September 9, 1855 > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02474 8540
Gc 975.501 Y82c Cummins, George D. 1822- 1876. The pestilence -- God's messenger and teacher
THE PESTILENCE-GOD'S MESSENGER AND TEACHER. 02 mhosp 000
DISCOURSE
IN BEHALF OF THE
SUFFERERS OF NORFOLK AND PORTSMOUTH, V.A.
DALITIEED IN
TRINITY CHURCH, WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 9, 1855,
BY REV. GEORGE D. CUMMINS, RECTOR ..
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WASHINGTON : GEORGE S. GIDEON, PRINTER. 1855.
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Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
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DISCOURSE.
NUMBERS XVI. 46.
"THERE IS WRATH GONE OUT FROM THE LORD : THE PLAGUE IS BEGUN."
THERE is a popular philosophy abroad in our times fraught with most pernicious error, and highly dishonoring to God. It is that common belief that ignores the presence and agency of God in His works, and virtually denies his providence over the world. It refuses to see, in all the operations of the universe, anything beyond the working of law-laws impressed upon matter by a Great Creator, but which go on working by them- selves, or which He has committed to the control of a mysterious power which men call Nature, and which they mean to substi- tute for God.
Far different is the teaching of the Bible and a true Christian . philosophy.
It does not indeed overlook or deny the agency of law. It rejoices to believe that the mir utest particle of matter is under the control of law ; and admits with delight that seience, in all its discoveries, is only widening the domain of law, and proving that the most fitful things, the restless wave and the erratic comet and the fierce tornado, are alike under the all-pervading control of law. But while admitting this, it holds to the imme- diate presence and agency of God in His works.
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It denies that laws can act without a living agent, and it sces in all the laws of matter the manifestation of the will of God- the " God in whom we live and move and have our being." . . Does the rain fall ? It is God that "sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
Is the lily arrayed in more glory than Solomon ? It is God who " clothes the grass of the field."
Does day succeed night ? It is our Father in heaven who . " maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and turneth the shadow of death into morning."
Do the elements rage ? Flames of fire are His messengers, stormy winds fulfil His word.
Does the seed sown in the earth germinate and come forth into new life from death ? It is God who "giveth it a body, and to every seed its own body." Am I sick ? It is His "rod" upon me. Am I in health ? He healeth all my diseases. Does a sparrow fall to the ground ? It is not without His agency. Do the kings of the earth consult together upon the mighty destinies of war and peace ? He holds " the hearts of kings in His hand, and turneth them as rivers of water."
Let us apply this revealed philosophy to the subject now filling all thoughts-" the pestilence that walketh in darkness."
If we have learned the Bible aright, it teaches us-
I. That the pestilence is from God, His special minister and messenger. II. That it is sent as a punishment for man's sins, and as a mighty teacher to man of forgotten or neglected truths.
1. In Deuteronomy, chap 28, Moses is predicting the curses which shall come upon the Israelites if they should forsake the Lord; and in the midst of the fearful catalogue of evils, this occurs : " The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee until he have consumed thee from off the land : the Lord shall
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smite thee with a consumption and with a fever and with an extreme burning."
2. In the book of Numbers, chap. 16, which records the sin and destruction of Korah and his company, likewise tells of the heavy judgment upon the people, who said on the morrow to Moses and Aaron, " Ye have killed the people of the Lord." The Lord said unto Moses, " Get you up from among this con- gregation, that I may consume them in a moment. And they fell upon their face; and Moses said unto Aaron, 'Take a censer, and put fire thereon from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation and make an atonement for them : for there is wrath gone out from the Lord : the plague is begun.' And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the congregation ; and behold the plague was begun among the people ; and he put on incense, and made an atonement for the people. And he stood between the living and the dead, and the plague was stayed."
3. There is another record still more strikingly setting forth these great truths. In the days of David's highest prosperity and splendor, he sinned against God in a way that demanded a public chastisement from God. A prophet is sent to him to announce to him the coming wrath, and to offer him a choice of three evils : "Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land ? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee ? or shall there be three days' pestilence in thy land ?" And David said, " I am in a great strait : let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for His mercies are great, and not into the hand of man." So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even unto the time appointed; and there died of the people, from Dan even to Beersheba, seventy thousand men.
The angel of death appears to David in a vision, wich his
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hand stretched out over Jerusalem to destroy it ; and he cried, " Lo ! I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thy hand be against me and my father's house." And the Lord said to the destroying angel, "It is enough ; stay now thine hand."
What can be plainer than that the pestilence is the minister of vengeance ?- that it holds its commission from God ?-- and that He alone can stay its hand, and say, "It is enough ?"- and that He will hearken to the prayer of true humiliation, and cease from ITis fierce anger ?
Let us turn from God's dealings with ancient Israel to trace the work of the same dread angel of death in more modern times. Since the Christian era began, twenty extensive pesti- lences have desolated Europe and the East, besides others whose devastation was more restricted.
In the year 265 (I now use the facts collected by others) a pestilence began in the Roman Empire, then embracing the civilized world. For fifteen years it prevailed unabated, raging in almost every province and city of the Empire. Five thou- sand persons died daily in the city of Rome. The records of Alexandria show that above half the population of that city perished.
In the middle of the sixth century, Constantinople, then the capital of the world, was startled by the approach of a dire pestilence. It came from Egypt, and men fell before its silent, invisible march as the corn before the scythe of the reaper. For three months five thousand, and at length ten thousand persons died daily. Some cities of the East were left without inhabit- ants; the harvest and the vintage perished on the ground, and the earth was left untilled. It pursued a double path, passing to the east over Syria, Persia, and India, and along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. So indignant
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was its deadly poison, that it abated not by the change of sca- sons. Through summer and winter it pursued its work of destruc- tion, and fifty-two long years elapsed before the air recovered its salubrity, and mankind were freed from the destroyer.
Again, in the fourteenth century, a pestilence came from the Levant to Europe. From the borders of the Mediterranean it ascended with resistless might towards Germany. The historians of that day state that it ceased seemingly only for the want of victims. It is calculated to have destroyed one-third of the population, or not less than 25,000,000 of lives.
You are more familiar with the plague of London, when in the corrupt reign of Charles II., sixty-eight thousand persons perished.
Can any man read the record of these things, and doubt whose work it is, and for what He works ? We, too, alas ! have been brought face to face with these mysterious messengers of God in our own short lifetime. A quarter of a century ago we heard of a pestilence rising in the East, and gradually spreading over Europe with terrible and irresistible fury. We thought the ocean rolling between us and the Old World might save us from its wrath. But in vain. Over the ocean's vast bosom it strode quickly, and soon began its work of destruction. And yet it lingers among us, and now and then renews its strength, and desolates some fair portion of our land.
And now another plague is upon us. Two years ago our hearts died within us as we read day by day of a fever in the city of New Orleans, whose unnumbered victims tainted the air for want of burial. Last year two other of our southern cities became for a time vast charnel-houses before the progress of this minister of wrath.
And now nearer still does it advance, until we can almost catch the sound of the wail of the dying and the desolate. Two
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sister cities in our adjoining State, bound to many of us by ties of friendship, but two months ago were enjoying every blessing of carth. Nowhere could be found greater plenty, happier homes, nobler-hearted men and women. Without warning, the air of heaven, unchanged to any human sense, became loaded with seeds of death. The destroying angel was on the wing. Steadily advanced the harvest of death, until thousands fled from before it, feeling it vain to struggle with its might. But there were many who could not and some who would not flec- would not abandon the wretched to their fate, uncared for and unministered to. Noble and fearless physicians ; faithful min- isters of Christ; and not a few courageous men and women, stood firm at their post. Alas! stood only too often to fall and die. Need I tell you all. the tale of horrors ? Alas! it is too well known. The pestilence reigns sole master of the doomed cities. The marts of trade are now more silent than the gloomy avenues of the cemetery : for these are now ceaselessly pressed by the wheels of the swift-moving hearse. Whole families are swept away. Even childhood's face of health and beauty wears the hue of the destroyer. Noble men have died, whose monu- ment will be more enduring than marble ; true-hearted women have folded their arms and died, whose memorial is on high with God. The unflinching physician, the self-sacrificing nurse, and the undaunted servant of God, sleep alike, side by side, with those for whom they willingly offered their lives.
But I have no heart to dwell upon the details of this gigantic sorrow. One sentence of a sufferer amid the scenes sums it all up-" We have nothing left us to do, but to suffer and to trust in God."
Is it not this pestilence from God ? Who can doubt it. Re- flect but a moment upon some of its distinguishing features.
1. Its very severity proves it to be the minister of wrath.
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No human mind can fully conceive all its horrors. What an idea is given to us of its terribleness, that God should consider three days of pestilence equal to seven years of famine, or to threc months of the ravages of a conquering army in the midst of a captive land ?
2. Reflect, again, upon its mysterious character. It is " the pestilence that walketh in darkness." It is shrouded in impenc- trable mystery. Who can tell its origin ? It "bloweth where it listeth; but we cannot tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth." What science has yet discovered its cause ? or revealed its hidden nature ? How does it baffle human knowledge ? Some simple change in the atmosphere, unseen and unfelt, occurs, and the plague is begun. No muttering wrath is heard in the firma- ment; no darknesss covers the sky; but the sun shines on as brightly, and the flowers bloom as sweetly as ever ; but with the very air that is our life we drink in the infection.
What mystery, too, marks its progress ! Upon what laws does it depend ? Why pass over one territory and fasten upon another ? Why desolate one city and spare another? Why should one family be taken and another left? Alas! we know not why. God is in the pestilence, and " He rides upon the storm."
S. Mark, moreover, its resistless might. As we cannot compre- hend its nature or its sources, so are we unable to cope with it. Human skill, and the science of the schools, confesses its power- lessness before it. No barrier can withstand its onward, resist- less progress. Men and brethren, the pestilence is the minister of God. It has a work to do for Him. It has a lesson to teach in His name. It is a punishment for sin. It is a warning as though spoken audibly from the lips of Jehovah against the sins, the folly, the vices, the reckless, heedless ungodliness of our age and nation.
Shall we say that the stricken communities upon which the
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blow has fallen arc guilty above all others because they suffer thus ? God forbid! I speak from long experience among them, when I say that they are beyond most of the cities of our nation in moralty, in practical religion, and in the love and fear of God. It is the whole land, to whom the rebuke is given.
Shall we say that we do not deserve the judgments of Heaven ? Nay, every mouth is stopped as the record of our transgressions rises before us.
What monstrous and continued crimes are daily committed ! What groveling vices pollute our cities ! What profligacy, in- temperance, Sabbath-breaking, desccrate the country ! What lack of honesty, truth, integrity! What accursed lust of gold holds captive all classes, until it comes to pass that the sole god of many is the millionaire.
Above all, what recklessness of death, of eternity, of judgment, of the soul's unending destinies ! what trampling on the blood of Christ, and crucifying the Son of God afresh, and crying "not this man, but Barrabas."
Let a poet draw the picture of our times :
" Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone ?
" But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind,
When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word ! Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind
The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword.
" Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age-why not ? I have neither hope nor trust ;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint.
Cheat and be cheate l, and die : who krowy ? we are ashes and dust.
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" Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie ;
Peace in her vineyard-yes !- but a company forges the wine.
" And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,
While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life."
"Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord ? shall not my soul be avenged on a nation such as this ?" Who can answer, no? Who is not ready to cry, " Enter not into judgment with thy servants O Lord ! Spare thy people, O God, and give not thy heritage to confusion !"
There may be other purposes to be subserved by this calamity. Is it presumptuous to suggest whether it may not be intended partly to rebuke the spirit of strife between the different sections of the country, and call us back to holier feelings ? How does this deep response from every portion of this vast nation to the cry for help rebuke those who would sever the bonds of our union, and array us in deadly hostility against each other.
This deep sympathy, this prompt action, this unwearied effort to send succor ; the rich giving of their abundance, and the poor man cheerfully yielding the wages of his daily toil; and above all, the martyr-spirit that has carried ever-to-be-revered men and women from North and South, to watch by the bed of the sick and dying, and smooth the passage to the tomb, or help to bring back the sufferers' life and health : these things have a meaning -- a voice-and it is the voice of God speaking through humanity, and saying, " Sirs, ye ure brethren ;" " let no man rend the bonds of your brotherhood "
And then again, has this mighty affliction proved that the Chris- tianity of our day is not a thing of name and profession only, but
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of life, of reality, and of endurance. It has proved that there are Christian men and women, to whom there is something dearer and more precious than life, even duty to God, and heaven-born charity and love to men. It has proved, too, that the Protestant Christianity of our land is not wanting in such a spirit. For while we honor and admire the devoted Sisters of Charity who have hastened to the scenes of suffering, there have been found men and women, who, though not banded into an order, or recog- nized as constituting a profession, have been no less faithful and devoted. Oh! I can believe that not even the marytr of old will wear a more resplendent crown than the Christian men and women who have counted not their lives dear unto them in the plague-infested hospitals of Norfolk and Portsmouth !
We cannot doubt that the pestilence has another mission still. It is an awful lesson, spoken in thunder-tones. concerning the vanity and frailty of human life, and the infinite importance of eternity. It is God's terrible rebuke of our insensibility to the great truth of our mortality, our waste of this little span of life- man's only state of probation for a life which is never to end.
It was the Psalmist's prayer, "Lord, make me to know how frail I am!" and it would seem almost a mockery of God thus to pray. Do we pray to know that the sun shines; that the tides ebb and flow; that the magnet points to the pole; that day follows night ? And yet these truths are not better known to us than the certainty of our frailty-of our death.
But while we cannot and do not deny it, we feel it not. We live as though we were never to die. We live to buy, and sell, and get gain ; we live for time, and sense, and earth. We ignore death and the grave. We risk the soul's undying interests beyond this fleeting life. We forget that our immortality is decided here; that eternity, whose sublime infinitude overwhelms the power of thought-eternity, whose mighty pendulum ticks
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millenniums and not seconds-is decided for us, by us, in our life of probation here. Oh! madness most fatal, to risk all that is grand and glorious and blessed beyond the tomb for a few days of fitful pleasure here. Hence it is that it needs some huge calamity like this striding among us, as Death appeared on the pale horse to St. John, going forth to trample down in his strength human pride and power-it needs some such thunderbolt of wrath to bring us to our knees, and bid us pray each for himself, "Lord, make me to know my end, and the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am."
We have yet another duty to perform, ere we close. We have to echo the cry for help, still wafted to our ears with fresh inten- sity. There is a cry for bread to feed the famishing. There is a cry for clothing to cover the children of sorrow. There is a cry from the poor, from the orphan, from the widow, for help ; all other means of subsistence are cut off, and charity must feed whole communities. The lecture-room of the House of God, where for six years it was my duty to preach the Gospel, is converted into an asylum for orphans, and orphans, too, made by this cal- amity. Oh ! as ye are men, as ye are parents, as ye are chris- tian men, and women, as ye hope to win heaven and enjoy the smile of God, respond to these cries, and let your response be deep, full, generous, munificent !
[The collection made after the Discourse amounted to $325, and with that made two weeks :ince, amounts to 8500, contributed by Trinity Church to this object. ]
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