"Shall there be cholera in the city, and God hath not done it? My soul cowered down under the majesty of that question, as I read it; it seemed to stretch its black wings over my head, and had I not known them to be the wings of God, I should have been afraid. The text talked with me in this fashion:—It is not the cholera which has slain these hundreds, the cholera was but the sword; the hand which scattered death is the hand of a greater than mere disease. God himself is traversing London."

"On the other hand, it is even more common for those who look to natural causes alone to sneer at believers who view the disease as a mysterious scourge from the hand of God. It is admitted that it would be most foolish to neglect the appointed means of averting sickness; but sneer who may, we believe it to be equally an act of folly to forget that the hand of the Lord is in all this."

"O London! dost thou think that God's Sabbaths are for ever to be forgotten; that the voice of the gospel is to sound in thine ears, and for ever to be despised? Shalt thou for ever turn thy foot from God's house and despise the ministrations of his truth, and shall he not visit such a city as this? This dreaded cholera is but a gentle blow from his hand, but if it be not felt, and its lesson be not learnt, there may come instead of this a pestilence which may reap the multitude as corn is reaped with the sickle; or he may permit us to be ravaged by a pestilence worse than the plague; I mean the pestilence of deadly, soul-destroying error. He may remove the candle of his gospel out of its place, and may take away the bread of life from those who have despised it, and then, O great city! thy doom is sealed!"

"We believe that God sends all pestilences, let them come how they may, and that he sends them with a purpose, let them be removed in whatever way they may; and we conceive that it is our business as ministers of God, to call the people's attention to God in the disease, and teach them the lesson which God would have them learn."

"My brethren, our God is too gracious to send us this cholera without a motive; and he is moreover too wise, for we all know that judgments frequently repeated lose their force. It is like the cry of 'Wolf,' if there be no meaning in it, men disregard it. God therefore never multiplies judgments unnecessarily. Besides, he is withal too great to trifle with men's lives. [...] Think you the Lord does this for nothing? The great Lion of vengeance has not roared unless sin has provoked him."

"We would sin, even if sin were bitter to us. We would pursue our ruin at all risks and hazards, and yet he cried, 'How can I give thee up?' He turned to plead with us. A mother's voice pleaded; from the grave she pleaded. The fever came and preached to us on the sick-bed, and we heard it. The cholera came and preached; we heard its voice in the street; we saw its power in the frequent funerals that passed along through the city. The preacher came and spoke as best he could, and besought you, as a brother, that you would turn; that you would not perish, but would turn to God, and all these entreaties—these stretchings out of the hand, these wooings, and these tears which God has used upon you—have been all in vain till now, and you have sinned and revolted yet more and more. Doth he not delight in mercy to continue still to invite, still to mourn, and not to cut it short by destroying you altogether?"

"I do not doubt that even cholera in our own times has been simply God's great sanitary commissioner, sent to London to warn us to cleanse this and sweep away that, that so on the whole life may last longer and mercy may prevail. Judge not God, then, by your feeble sense, wait awhile till you see his judgments in the long run, and then you shall discern how they are always seasoned with mercy, and love holds the sword."

"How we started with alarm, some of us, I mean, when we heard the other day that the cholera was actually in this country, and of cases reported very near to us. For my part, I thought, that terrible as such an affliction would be, perhaps God might overrule it to the waking up of the slumbering multitudes of this great city. I think everyone must have observed that during the time of such visitations there is a large measure of tenderness in the public mind. Men dare not play with eternal matters when they feel them to be so near, and when death comes in the next street, or the next house, or the next room, they cannot trifle life away as formerly they did."

"But it is much to be feared that a constant run of prosperity, perpetual peace and freedom from disease, may breed in our minds just what it has done in all human minds before, namely, security and pride, heathenism and forgetfulness of God. It is a most solemn fact that human nature can scarcely bear a long continuance of peace and health. It is almost necessary that we should be every now and then salted with affliction, lest we putrefy with sin. God grant we may have neither famine, nor sword; but as we have pestilence in a very slight degree, it becomes us to ask the Lord to bless it to the people that a tenderness of conscience may be apparent throughout the multitude, and they may recognise the hand of God. Already I have been told by Christian brethren labouring in the east of London, that there is a greater willingness to listen to gospel truth, and that if there be a religious service it is more acceptable to the people now than it was; for which I thank God as an indication that affliction is answering its purpose. There was, perhaps, no part of London more destitute of the means of grace, and of the desire to use the means, than that particular district where the plague has fallen; and if the Lord shall but make those teeming thousands anxious to hear the gospel of Jesus, and teach them to trust in him, then the design will be answered; . . . May it be so, O Lord, for thy Son Jesus Christ's sake."

"Disease, however, is a trumpet which must be heard. Its echoes reach the miserable garrets where the poor are crowded together, and have never heard nor cared for the name of Christ,—they hear the sound, and as one after another dies, they tremble. In the darkest cellar in the most crowded haunt of vice; ay! and in the palaces of kings, in the halls of the rich and great, the sound finds an entrance and the cry is raised, 'The death plague is come! The cholera is among us!' All men are compelled to hear the trumpet-voice—would to God they heard it to better purpose! Would to God all of us were aroused to a searching of heart, and, above all, led to fly to Christ Jesus, the great sacrifice for sin, and to find in him a rescue from the greater plague, the wrath to come!"

"We have all felt grieved when reading our bills of mortality to observe the mysterious spread of cholera in our great city. It is high time that it should be made the subject of special prayer, and that the nation should seek unto the Lord for its removal. While as yet there has been but comparatively little of the evil, we should be humbled under it, that we may be spared a greater outbreak."

"Brethren and sisters, I hope there are some of us who could go gladly to that judgment seat, even if we had to traverse the jaws of death to reach it. [...] It is easy to speak of full assurance, but, believe me, it is not quite so easy to have it in right down earnest in trying times. If some of you get the finger-ache your confidence oozes out at your joints, and if you have but a little sickness you think, 'Ah! it may be cholera, what shall I do?' Can you not bear to die, how then will you bear to live for ever? Could you not look death in the face without a shudder; then how will you endure the judgment? Could you gaze upon death, and feel that he is your friend and not your foe?"