ever.

God grant that we, who have just seen the most cunningly organized and
daintily bedizened specimen of a world, which ever flaunted on the earth
since men began to build their towers of Babel, collapse and crumble at a
single blow, may take God's hint, that the fashion of this world passeth
away. Let the idle, the frivolous, the sensual, and those who, like
Figaro's Marquis, have earned all earthly happiness by only taking the
trouble to be born--let them look back on this last awful Christmas-tide,
and hear, speaking in fact unmistakeable, the voice of the Lord. Think
ye that they whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were
sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I
tell you, "Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

There are those who will hear such words with a smile, even with a sneer,
and say, Such wholesale judgments of God, even granting that there are
such things, are, after all, very rare: it is very seldom that a whole
class, a whole system of society, is punished in mass--and why then need
we trouble ourselves about so remote a probability?

Then know this--that as surely as God sometimes punishes wholesale, so
surely is He always punishing in detail. By that infinite concatenation
of moral causes and effects, which makes the whole world one mass of
special Providences, every sin of ours will punish itself, and probably
punish itself in kind. Are we selfish? We shall call out selfishness in
others. Do we neglect our duty? Then others will neglect their duty to
us. Do we indulge our passions? Then others, who depend on us, will
indulge theirs, to our detriment and misery. Do we squander our money?
Then our children and our servants will squander our money for us.