t seen, nor
ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive
what God has prepared for those who love Him. But this I can tell
you, that these things are taken _from_ men, instead of being added
to them, by their not seeking first God's kingdom and His
righteousness. I can tell you, as the Prophet does, that it is the
sins of man which withhold good things from him; because though, as
the Prophet says in the same place, God sends the good things, and
the former and latter rain in their season, and reserves to men
still the appointed weeks of harvest, yet men will not fear that
same Lord their God; and therefore those good things are wasted, and
mankind remains too often miserable in spite of God's goodness, and
starving in the midst of God's plenty.

If you wish to know what I mean, look but once at this present war.
I do not complain of the war. I honour the war. I thank God from
the bottom of my heart for this great and glorious victory, and I
call on you to thank Him, too, for it. I am none of those who think
war sinful. I cannot do so, for I swore at my baptism to fight
manfully under Christ's banner against the world, the flesh, and the
Devil; and if we cannot reach the Devil and his works by any other
means, we must reach them as we are doing now, by sharp shot and
cold steel, and we must hold it an honourable thing, and few things
more honourable on earth, for a man to die fighting against evil
men, and an evil world-devouring empire, like that of Babylon of
old, or this of Russia now, that he may save not merely us who sit
here now, but our children's children, and generations yet unborn,
from Russian tyranny, and Russian falsehood, and Russian profligacy,
and Russian superstition. I say, I do not complain of this war; but
I ask you to look at the mere waste which it brings, the mere waste
of God's blessings. Consider all the skilful men now employed in
making cannon, shot, and powder to kill mortal men, who might every
one of them, in time of peace, have been employed in making things
which would feed, and clothe, and comfort mortal man. Consider that
very powder and shot itself, the fruit of so much labour and money,
made simply to be shot away, once for all, as if a man should spend
months in making some precious vessel, and then dash it to pieces
the moment it was made. Consider that Sevastopol alone; the
millions of money which it must have cost--the stone, the timber,
the iron,