e real method after which this universe of ours is
governed. For example, let me give you a few illustrations.

I have a friend in Boston, one of the noblest men I ever knew, sweet,
gentle, true: he came to me one day, and said: "Mr. Savage, I have
tried all my life to be an honest man. I do not own an ill-gotten
dollar. I have tried to be kind and helpful to people in need, in
trouble; and yet," and then it began to dawn on him that he was not on
a very logical track, for he smiled, "and yet I have not got on very
well in the world; I have not made a great deal of money; I have not
been specially prosperous in business." And the implication was that
here, next door or in another street, was a man who had a good many
ill-gotten dollars, and who had not been generous or kindly or humane
or tender, but who had prospered and become rich, as he had not. And he
raised this as a serious objection against the justice of the
government of the world.

I have had mothers; I presume a thousand times, say to me: "I have
tried to take the best possible care of my child. I loved my child, I
watched over it night and day, I have money enough to give it a good
education, I could train it into fitness for life; and yet my child is
taken away." Here is somebody else who has not the means to educate her
child, perhaps whose character and intelligence are a good deal below
the average level. Her child is spared, spared for what? Spared for a
career for which it will be entirely unfitted; and the question is, Why
does God do such things, why is the universe governed in this fashion?

And I have had persons say to me: "I have been ill all my life, I have
suffered no end of pain and trouble: I wonder why? What have I done
that I must be burdened and afflicted after this fashion?" So these
questions are coming up perpetually, showing that underlying the
ordinary surface of our common daily life is still this theory that God
arbitrarily governs the world, and rewards people for being good with
health and with money and with children and with all sorts of
prosperity. There is no end of talk in regard to judgments, as they are
called. I remember when I was living in the West I take this as an
illustration as good as any a neighboring small city was badly
devastated by fire. All the ministers around me in my city began to
preach about it as a judgment of God for the supposed wickedness of
this city. One peculiar thing about this particular judgm