t was two thousand years ago, that
"God is a righteous judge, strong and patient." "If a man will not turn,
He will whet His sword; He hath bent His bow, and made it ready," against
those who travail with mischief, who conceive sorrow, and bring forth
ungodliness. They dig up pits for their neighbours, and fall themselves
into the destruction which they have made for others; not knowing that it
is as true now as it was two thousand years ago, that God is for ever
saying to the ungodly, "Why dost thou preach my laws, and takest my
covenant in thy mouth; whereas thou hatest to be reformed, and hast cast
my words behind thee? Thou hast let thy mouth speak wickedness, and with
thy tongue thou hast set forth deceit. These things hast thou done, and
I held my tongue, and thou thoughtest, wickedly, that I am even such a
one as thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things
which thou hast done. O consider this, ye that forget God: lest I pluck
you away, and there be none to deliver you."

Let us lay this to heart, and say, there can be no doubt--I at least have
none--that there is growing up among us a serious divorce between faith
and practice; a serious disbelief that the kingdom of heaven is about us,
and that Christ is ruling us, as He told us plainly enough in His
parables, by the laws of the kingdom of heaven; and that He does, and
will punish and reward each man according to those laws, and according to
nothing else.

We pride ourselves on our superior light, and our improved civilisation,
and look down on the old Roman Catholic missionaries, who converted our
forefathers from heathendom in the Middle Ages. Now, I am a Protestant,
if ever there was one, and I know well that these men had their
superstitions and false doctrines. They made mistakes, and often worse
than mistakes, for they were but men. But this I tell you, that if they
had not had a deep and sound belief that they were in the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of heaven; and that they and all men must obey the laws of
the kingdom of heaven; and that the first law of it was, that wrongdoing
would be punished, and rightdoing rewarded, in this life, every day, and
all day long, as sure as Christ the living Lord reigned in righteousness
over all the earth; if they had not believed that, I say, and acted on
it, we should probably have been heathen at this day. As it is, unless
we Protestants get back the o