THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.-ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 78, 2 April 1900, Page 2

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.ITS REAL SIGNIFICANCE.

At Knox Church yesterday Rev. 11. Kelly spoke on the above subject, basing his remarks on T. Sam., V. C: "And the hand of. the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and He destroyed them and Smote them with tumours, 'even Ashdod and the borders thereof." Jhiritlg the course of his remarks the preacher said: —

' "Medical men have called attention to the fact that the dreaded bubonic plague is probably that which overtook the Philistines over three thousand years ago. The prominent feature in the disease is the presence of bilboes,' or tumours, and it appears this was also the chief symptom in the plague which attacked the Philistines? Curiously enough, the BlackDeath of the fourteenth century, and the Great Plague of the seventeenth Century were both characterised by little tumours. An obscure hint in this same chapter re mice that mar the land suggests-the idea that the plague affected both men and mice, and strikingly points to the part played by "rats'in spreading- the disease to-day.. So positive are some of our scientific authorities on the identity of the ancient and modern plague that they say: 'The correspondence, with other descriptions, seems to show clearly and convincingly that the epidemic described in I. Samuel was true bubonic plague.' It is now generally recognised that, thotigh war is a pi-o-found calamity, it has, in the providence of God, secured great blessings for the race. A little consideration will' show with equal conclusiveness that the plagiie is one of the prophets of the Almighty, proclaiming to us in unambiguous tones and with most impressive pi-oof the mind of the living Got}.

"First, the plague Is God's commentary upon evil habits of life. All the great pestilences of history take their rise in China, Egypt, or Africa, or among some other people stricken by heathenism, and vice. Just where men are run down by sin, they are most accessible to plague. No desoling pestilence is known to have arisen among a Christian people. There are no Christian plagues. Dirt and plague go together; cleanliness and health are sworn friends. The World is constructed and governed upon the principle that dirt is not health, that vice is not healthy. Again and again God seems compelled, if we may so speak, to remind the human race of the fundamental laws. It is riot enotigh that He appeals,to our intelligence. He reaches us through our fears. For we are but children to whom a sight of the rod and a taste of it are still necessary. It may be that for an occasional plague the human stock would steadily deteriorate, its blood become fouler and. fouler, and 4 its mental and moral energies sink to a level from which it would, have no energy to rise. There- are forces steadily at work for the weeding out from the race of undesirable forms,, there is in certain forms of sin an innate power of destruction which ensures the disappearance of families in a few generations; but in these cases the lesson is spread over too long a<-period to be impressive. In the vast and complicated machinery of the Omniscient provision is made that when filth and vice reach a certain point there breaks out some virulent plague which purges the world of much of its diseased blood and thus guarantees that the stock shall not sink in a hopeless quagmire. Along with this result there is the further advantage that the lesson is short and sharp and likely to impress the survi-. vors. God, at ordinary times, seems so far away and so unreal. The wicked flourish and boast in their iniquity. To save, as it were, His own reputation, to vindicate at once His holiness and power, God marches put against the defiant rebels. and, by fearful works in righteousness, gives visibility and energy to the moral law. If men will not read it in His woi'd, and in their own moral constitution, if the voice of conscience is drowned by the clamour of passion and the laughter of a mad world, we are made, by means of pestilence and plague, to see and hear and feel that there is a God behind all life itixd that He is no incarnation of infinite good nature, but just and mighty and jealous of His honour, God's mill grinds slowly—so sloAvly that many a sinner never feels crushed at all. He Seems to enjoy impunity. The day of reckoning seems a chimera. Moral threatenings. seem harmless and their effects remote. Suddenly a plague breaks out. It is traced to .filthy physical habits and filthy moral habits.. Science says so, and science is God's servant. The plague is a prophet— a:Judah crying to the world's Ninevehs that except they repent and cleanse their ways some destruction awaits them. Dirt and disease are joined together, and no man can put them asunder.: Holiness and health can never be divorced. It is lamentable, arid, it is disgraceful, that in a city like Auckland, exposed to the ravages of plague, the very cleanliness which is such a protection should b.e rendered difficult, if not impossible, through an insufficient supply of water. I pray that God may not scourge tis for our supineness by a visitation of plague at the very moment when we are suffering alreadyfor our' sins as a community. The plague announces to us in most solemn tones that our reforms of environment and personal habits, must not be spasmodic and forced upon us only in panic, but the outgrowth of an intelligent and devout conviction that God has.joined our happiness to an honest attempt to make the world as fair as when it came first from His hand. It is GodV world, and when we defile it it rlenles us; when we sweeten it it blesses us. We cannot play tricks with the multiplication table, and we can no more play tricks with the eternal law which unites vice and disease. There, is a class of men who laugh contemptuously at foreign missions.

They forget that as missions prosper the danger of plague decreases. The missionary prepares the way for trade, for' when natives become Christians they soon demand soap, and the demand for soap means better health. When the soul is made clean the native becomes aware, that his body is dirtjr. Christianity creates a new consciousness. The moral is that if for no better reason one ought to send the Gospel to the heathen in sheer selfdefence. Send them the Gospel or they will send us their plagues, and keep sending them. It is well to quarantine and disinfect and cleanse our drains and kill our vermin. Let us go to the source of all plague— the sin and filth of the countries whence they come. The plague preaches this gospel. Like Christ, it summons us to make disciples of all nations and baptize them. Wherever the shadow of the Gospel falls it heals, it cleanses, it sweetens;it makes earth like heaven, in which nothing deiiles. The true preventive of plagues is missions. We lift our hearts to Christ now, we draw near to Him, and virtue goes out from Him to us. He is not the Saviour of the community until He is the Saviour of individuals."