; to which uninviting retreat it is not now necessary
that we should follow them.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FAMINE YEAR.

They who were in the south of Ireland during the winter of 1846-47
will not readily forget the agony of that period. For many, many
years preceding and up to that time, the increasing swarms of the
country had been fed upon the potato, and upon the potato only; and
now all at once the potato failed them, and the greater part of eight
million human beings were left without food.

The destruction of the potato was the work of God; and it was natural
to attribute the sufferings which at once overwhelmed the unfortunate
country to God's anger--to his wrath for the misdeeds of which
that country had been guilty. For myself, I do not believe in such
exhibitions of God's anger. When wars come, and pestilence, and
famine; when the people of a land are worse than decimated, and the
living hardly able to bury the dead, I cannot coincide with those who
would deprecate God's wrath by prayers. I do not believe that our God
stalks darkly along the clouds, laying thousands low with the arrows
of death, and those thousands the most ignorant, because men who are
not ignorant have displeased Him. Nor, if in his wisdom He did do so,
can I think that men's prayers would hinder that which his wisdom had
seen to be good and right.

But though I do not believe in exhibitions of God's anger, I do
believe in exhibitions of his mercy. When men by their folly and by
the shortness of their vision have brought upon themselves penalties
which seem to be overwhelming, to which no end can be seen, which
would be overwhelming were no aid coming to us but our own, then God
raises his hand, not in anger, but in mercy, and by his wisdom does
for us that for which our own wisdom has been insufficient.

But on no Christian basis can I understand the justice or acknowledge
the propriety of asking our Lord to abate his wrath in detail, or to
alter his settled purpose. If He be wise, would we change his wisdom?
If He be merciful, would we limit his mercy? There comes upon us some
strange disease, and we bid Him to stay his hand. But the disease,
when it has passed by, has taught us lessons of cleanliness, which
no master less stern would have made acceptable. A famine strikes us,
and we again beg that that hand may be stayed;--beg as the Greeks
were said to beg when they thought that the anger of Phoebus was
hot against them becaus