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Updated: October 9, 2025
Some will not hear of great pestilences being scourges of the sins of men; and if only they can find out the immediate, imagine that they have found out the ultimate, causes of these; while yet they have only to speak of a 'plague' and they implicitly avouch the very truth which they have set themselves to deny; for a 'plague, what is it but a stroke; so called, because that universal conscience of men which is never at fault, has felt and in this way confessed it to be such?
Theologists with an earnestness fear-enkindled, dwelt upon the biblical prophecies, and expounded them to the people with a directness and simplicity of which no previous instance had been known. It is noticeable that the popular prejudices and vulgar errors in regard to pestilences and wars errors which were wont to prevail upon every appearance of a comet were now altogether unknown.
The choice of war or peace, of battle or maneuvering for delay, seemed to the Romans the taking of the advice of the gods, who manifested their injunctions by various signs, by the appearance of the liver, heart, lungs and kidneys of the cattle and sheep sacrificed, by the flight of birds, by the shape of the flames of altar-fires, all regarded as definite answers to explicit questions; who also made suggestions or gave warnings by means of earthquakes, floods, conflagrations, pestilences, eclipses, by the aurora borealis, by any sort of strange happening.
In the difficult scheme of the world's governance, in the storms, earthquakes, pestilences, sufferings of all kinds signs of failure, sickness, and decay, and death, signs of the victory of evil and the failure of good we can only believe in God, and that all will issue in righteous ends.
The palace used to face the Ghetto, but that is gone, swept away to the very last stone by the municipality in a fine hygienic frenzy, though, in truth, neither plague nor cholera had ever taken hold there in the pestilences of old days, when the Christian city was choked with the dead it could not bury.
Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and great earth-quakes shall be in divers places, and famines and pestilences; and fearful sights, and great signs shall there be from heaven.
Persia, better called a kingdom, perhaps, than an empire, commands about forty millions of subjects; as against imperial Rome's who can say? The population there must have gone down by many millions since the days of the Antonines, with all the civil wars, plagues, pestilences, and famines that have harrowed the years between.
The signs are as follows many false Christs should arise, there should be wars and rumors of wars, nation should rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there should be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name sake.
Afflictive occurrences, such as famines, pestilences, earthquakes, are signs of some hostile supernatural power, defense against which requires the avoidance of ordinary pursuits. Arbitrary enactments by chiefs may attach restrictions to a particular day. Sometimes restrictive usages, of obscure origin, become communal law.
If therefore we are able to deal radically with destitution we shall at the same time strike an effective blow at the pestilences which are at present such a scourge to India. Again I would like to remind my readers of another fact, and in this aspect of the question, all classes of the community are bound to be interested.
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