of contrariety to those laws, they would suffer every discomfort and disorder both of mind and body?—that the "pestilence would clave" to them, and they would be smitten with "a consumption and a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning;"—that they would suffer with "the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch;"—that they would be "smitten in the knees and in the legs with a sore botch that could not be healed, from the sole of the foot to the top of the head;" that they would have "great plagues and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses."[1] Here we find it foretold to that people that physical disorders and bodily sufferings would be the direct consequence of mental disorders and indulgence in sin. What was true then, is true now: the laws of the human constitution are the same. Indulgence in evil, and a life in opposition to the laws of Divine order, are sure, sooner or later, to bring physical evil and suffering in their train. The consequence is as certain as the law of cause and effect. And what makes this consequence far sadder, is that the pain does not always end with the guilty individual himself, but by the law of hereditary transmission before spoken of as necessarily existing and ordained originally for wise purposes,—disease and suffering are oftentimes handed down to children and posterity. This thought should be an additional incentive to a man, to refrain from evil courses and sinful indulgences, lest not only he himself be the sufferer, but also his innocent descendants.
The analogy between physical and moral diseases is strikingly set forth in the language of the prophet
- ↑ See Deateronomy xxviii.
