because they themselves raise the
thorns; and a disorderly place, because their own tempers and desires are
disorderly; and a wilderness, because they themselves have run wild,
barbarians at heart, however civilised in dress and outward manners. St.
James tells them that of old. "From whence," he says, "come wars and
quarrels among you? Come they not hence, even of the lusts which war in
your members? You long, and have not. You fight and war, yet you have
not, because you ask not. You ask, and have not. You pray for this and
that, and God does not give it you. Because you ask amiss, selfishly to
consume it on your lusts." And then you say, This world is an evil
place, full of temptations. What says St. James to that? "Let no man
say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted
with evil, neither tempteth He any man. But every man is tempted, when
he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed."

So it was in the Old Testament times, and so it is in these Christian
times. God is good, and God's world is good; and the evil is not in the
world around us, but in our own foolish hearts. If we follow our own
foolish hearts, we shall find this world a bad place, as the old Jews
found it--whenever they went wrong and sinned against God--because we are
breaking its laws, and they will punish us. If we follow the
commandments of God, we shall find this world a good place, as the old
Jews found it--whenever they went right, and obeyed God--because we shall
be obeying its laws, and they will reward us. This is God's promise
alike to the old Jewish fathers and to us Christian men. And this is no
transitory or passing promise, but is founded on the eternal and
everlasting law of right, by which God has made all worlds, and which He
Himself cannot alter, for it springs out of His own essence and His own
eternal being. Hear, then, the conclusion of the whole matter: God hath
called you that you might inherit a blessing.

He hath made you of a blessed race, created in His own likeness, to whom
He hath put all things in subjection, making man a little lower than the
angels, that He might crown him with glory and worship: a race so
precious in God's eyes--we know not why--that when mankind had fallen,
and seemed ready to perish from their own sin and ignorance, God spared
not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us, that the world by
Him might be saved.