They simply punish themselves.
They earn their own ruin by the very laws of human nature. They must
find hope in something and strength in something; and if they will not
see that God is their hope, they will hope to get rich as fast as
possible, and make themselves safe so. If they will not see that God is
their strength, they will find strength in cunning, in intrigue, in
flattery of the strong and tyranny over the weak, and in making
themselves strong so. They want a present help in trouble; and if they
will not believe that God is a present help in trouble, they will try to
help themselves out of their trouble by begging, lying, swindling,
forging, and all those meannesses which fill our newspapers with shameful
stories day by day, and which all arise simply out of want of faith in
God.
Moreover, it is written, "Be still, and know that I am God." And if men
will not be still, they will not know that He is God. And if they do not
know that the gracious Christ is God, they will not be still; and
therefore they will grow more and more restless, discontented, envious,
violent, irreverent, full of passions which injure their own souls, and
sap the very foundations of order and society and civilised life.
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