[1] Civil war and foreign invasion shall rage through this
reprobate people like the fire with which the husbandman
clears the ground of briers and thorns. The wickedness of
the land becomes its own punishment, and burns with a fury
which is indeed the wrath of God, while its fuel is the
people themselves.--_Strachey._
Wickedness, _i.e.,_ the constant thirst of evil, is a fire
which a man kindles in himself. And when the grace of God
which daps and restrains this fire is all over, it is sure
to burst forth. . . . The fire, into which this wickedness
bursts forth, seizes individuals first of all; and then,
like a forest fire, it seizes upon the nation at large in
all its ranks and members, who roll up in the form of
ascending smoke. . . . In its historical manifestation,
this judgment consisted in the most inhuman
self-destruction during an anarchial civil
war.--_Delitzsch._
The picture of guilt grows darker still. It is like
destroying fire in the jungle of a forest. The confusion
and misery thus caused are like the volumes of smoke that
mount up in whirling eddies from such a
conflagration.--_Birks._
[2] Oftentimes a ruling sin will have power little by little to
colour the whole life with its own tints; to assimilate
everything there to itself, as in ever-widening circles to
absorb all into its own vortex, being as it were a gulf, a
maelstrom, into which all that was better and nobler in the
man is irresistibly attracted and drawn, and is there
swallowed up, and for ever disappears.--_Trench._
See also the Outline: THE TOW AND THE SPARK, pp. 69-71.
[3] See Outline: INIQUITY A BURDEN, p. 13.
[4] When the heart begins once to be kindled, it is easy to
smother the smoke of passion, which else will fume up into
the head and gather into so thick a cloud that we shall
lose the very sight of ourselves, and what is best to be
done--_Sibbes._
When a fire is first broken out in a chimney, it may with
much less labour be quenched than when it has seized the
timber of the house. What small beginnings had those fires
which have conquered stately palaces, and turned famous
cities into ruinous heaps!--_Swinnock._
[5] See Outline: INIQUITY A BURDEN, p. 13.