ed. He has more confidence
even in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity. We
found by statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average
committed; just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just
so many suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so many accidents on
an average; just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than
themselves; just so many murders of a particular kind; just the same
number of accidents; and I say tonight statistics utterly demolish the
idea of special providence. Only the other day a gentleman was telling
me of a case of special providence. He knew it. He had been the
subject of it. Yes, sir! A few years ago he was about to go on a ship
when he was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on
board. Yes! I said, "Do you think the fellows that were drowned
believed in special providence?" Think of the infinite egotism of such
a doctrine. Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with 500
passengers, and they go down to the bottom of the sea--fathers,
mothers, children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon the
shores of expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that didn't
happen to go! And he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in
his poor little withered behalf and let the rest all go. That is
special providence!

You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of
thanksgiving. We say to God, "Although You have afflicted all the
other countries, although You have sent war, and desolation, and famine
on everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been
kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It don't make a bit of
difference whether we have good times or not--not a bit; the
thanksgiving is always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a
governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to
tell how thankful the people were, how prosperous the State had been;
and there was a young fellow in the State who got out another
proclamation, saying: "Fearing that the Lord might be misled by
official correspondence," he went on to say that the governor's
proclamation was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous;
that the crops had been an almost entire failure; that nearly every
farm in the state was mortgaged; that if the Lord did not believe him,
all he asked was He would send some angel in whom he had confidence to
look the matter over