And yet the Scripture does most certainly speak of the Lord’s coming out of His place to visit—of the Son of Man coming, and not coming to men—of His visiting us at one time and not at another. How does that agree with what I have just said? My dear friends, we shall see that it agrees perfectly with what I have said, if we will only just remember that we are not beasts, but men. It may seem a strange thing to have to remind people of, but it is just what they are always forgetting. My friends, we are not animals, we are not spiders to do nothing but spin, or birds only to build nests for ourselves, much less swine to do nothing but dig after roots and fruits, and get what we can out of the clods of the ground. We are the children of the Most High God; we have immortal souls within us; nay, more, we are our souls: our bodies are our husk—our shell—our clothes—our house—changing day by day, and year by year upon us, one day to drop off us till the Resurrection. But _we_ are our _souls_, and when God visits, it is our souls He visits, not merely our bodies. There is the whole secret. People forget God, and therefore they are glad to fancy that He has forgotten them, and has nothing to do with this world of His which they are misusing for their own selfish ends; and then God in His mercy visits them. He knocks at the door of their hearts, saying: “See! I was close to you all the while.” He forces them to see Him and to confess that He is there whether they choose or not. God is not away from the world. He is away from people’s hearts, because He has given people free wills, and with free wills the power of keeping Him out of their hearts or letting Him in. And when God visits He forces Himself on our attention. He knocks at the door of our hard hearts so loudly and sharply that He forces all to confess that He is there—all who are not utterly reprobate and spiritually dead. In blessings as well as in curses, God knocks at our hearts. By sudden good fortune, as well as by sudden mishap; by a great deliverance from enemies, by an abundant harvest, as well as by famine and pestilence. Therefore this cholera has been a true visitation of God. The poor had fancied that they might be as dirty, the rich had fancied that they might be as careless, as they chose; in short, that they might break God’s laws of cleanliness and brotherly care without His troubling Himself about the matter. And lo! He has visited us; and shown us that He does care about the matter by taking it into His own hands with a vengeance. He who cannot see God’s hand in the cholera must be as blind—as blind as who?—as blind as he that cannot see God’s hand when there is no cholera; as blind as he who cannot see God’s hand in every meal he eats, and every breath he draws; for that man is stone blind—he can be no blinder. The cholera came; everyone ought to see that it did not come by blind chance, but by the will of some wise and righteous Person; for in the first place God gave us fair warning. The cholera came from India at a steady pace. We knew to a month when it would arrive here. And it came, too, by no blind necessity, as if it was forced to take people whether it liked or not. Just as it was in the fever here, so it was in the cholera, “One shall be taken and another left.” It took one of a street and left another; took one person in a family and left another: it took the rich man who fancied he was safe, as well as the poor man who did not care whether he was safe or not. The respectable man walking home to his comfortable house, passed by some untrapped drain, and then poisonous gas struck him and he died. The rich physician who had been curing others, could not save himself from the poison of the crowded graveyard which had been allowed to remain at the back of his house. By all sorts of strange and unfathomable judgments the cholera showed itself to be working, not by a blind necessity, but at the will of a thinking Person, of a living God, whose ways are not as our own ways, and His paths are in the great deep. And yet the cholera showed—and this is what I want to make you feel—that it was working at the will of the same God in whom we live and move and have our being, who sends the food we eat, the water in which we wash, the air we breathe, and who has ordained for all these things natural laws, according to which they work, and which He never breaks, nor allows us to break them. For every case of cholera could be traced to some breaking of these laws—foul air—foul food—foul water, or careless and dirty contact with infected persons; so that by this God showed that He and not chance ruled the world, and that he was indeed the living and willing God.