He tells them that an awful
ruin was coming unless they repented and mended. How fearfully true his
words were, the next fifty years proved. The axe, he said, was laid to
the root of the tree; and the axe was the heathen Roman, even then master
of the land. But God, not the Roman Caesar merely, was laying the axe.
And He was a good God, who only wanted goodness, which He would preserve;
not badness, which He would destroy. Therefore men must not merely
repent and do penance, they must bring forth fruits meet for penance; do
right instead of doing wrong, lest they be found barren trees, and be cut
down, and cast into that everlasting fire of God, which, thanks be to His
Holy name, burns for ever--unquenchable by all men's politics, and
systems, and political or other economies, to destroy out of God's
Kingdom all that offendeth and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie--
oppressors, quacks, cheats, hypocrites, and the rest.
The people--the farming class--came to him with "What shall we do?" The
young priest and nobleman, in his garment of camel's hair, has nothing
but plain morality for them.
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