THE GREAT PLAGUE.
“Fools make a mock at sin.”—PROV. xiv. 9.
“What a violent storm is raging!” said Thorn the teacher to his
scholars, as, after having dismissed them at the close of the school
hours, he found them clustering together in the porch, afraid of
venturing forth into the pelting rain, pouring down in large, heavy
drops, mingled with hail, which danced on the wet, brown pavement. “Come
back into the room, my children: it is better than standing there in the
cold. Amuse yourselves as you like until the weather clears up, while I
occupy myself with reading.”
The boys gladly availed themselves of the permission, and began to play
together in one part of the room, while the weary teacher sat down in
another, rested his pale brow on his hand, and tried, as far as the
noise and talking would let him, to forget his fatigue in a book.
He soon, however, found it impossible not to hear what was passing; his
eye rested, indeed, on the page, but his mind could not take in the
sense of it. He loved his pupils too well to think that his care of them
should end with the hours of study: he looked on the immortal beings
committed to his charge as those for whom he must one day render an
account to his God and theirs.
“No, we’re all tired of that!” cried the voice of Bat Nayland, as some
well-known game was proposed. “I know something that will give us a deal
more fun: let’s play at the highwayman and the judge!”
“What’s that? what’s that?” cried a dozen young voices.
“Oh! it’s what I saw at the penny theatre, about a clever thief robbing
a judge: only think—robbing a judge!” The last words were repeated
around the room in various tones of amusement and surprise.
“Oh! you shall know all about it: but first we must arrange the parts.
You, Pat, shall be the thief, and I will be the judge—no, you shall be
the judge and I the thief!” He was interrupted by a burst of laughter.
“Be quiet, will you?—who’ll be the policeman?”
“I! I!” cried several of the children, eager to join in the proposed
play.
“Now, Sam, you shall be the fat landlady,”—there was another roar of
merriment, louder than before;—“for you must know that the thief is to
get drunk; that’s how he is to be taken by the policeman; and he
staggers here and there,”—Bat began to imitate the unsteady movements of
an intoxicated man, amid the renewed mirth of the children;—“and when
they seize him he calls out a great oath—you shall hear it all just as I
heard it.”
“I hope not,” said Thorn, very quietly, raising his eyes from his book.
The boys were quiet in a moment: they had almost forgotten the presence
of their teacher.
“Why, sir, do you think that there is any harm?” said Bat Nayland: “it
does not make us thieves to have a little fun about them.”
“It lessens your horror for their crime; and remember the words in the
Bible, _Fools make a mock at sin_. Can you imagine any true child of God
laughing at theft, drunkenness, and swearing?”
There was profound silence in the room.
“This is one cause, I believe, why penny theatres are one of the most
fruitful sources of vice and ruin to those who attend them. Wickedness,
instead of appearing hateful as it does in God’s Word, is made amusing,
and even sometimes attractive; and those who willingly place themselves
in the way of being corrupted by such sights, only mock the Holy One
when they pray, _Lead us not into temptation_.
[Illustration: THE TEACHER’S STORY.]
“But,” continued the teacher in a more cheerful tone, “if I have stopped
your amusement in one way, it is but fair that I should contribute to it
in another. I hear the rain still pattering without—what would you say
to my telling you a story?”
“A story! a story!” repeated the scholars, forming in a little circle
around their teacher; for where are the children to be found upon earth
on whom that word does not act like a spell!
“It is now long, long ago,” commenced Thorn, “nearly two hundred years,
since the fearful plague raged in London. Nothing which we have
witnessed in these happier days can give an idea of the horrors of that
time. It is said that nearly seventy thousand people perished of this
awful malady—some authors make the number even ninety thousand! The
nearest relatives were afraid of each other. When an unfortunate being
showed symptoms that the disease had seized him—the swelling under the
arms, the pain in the throat, the black spots, which were signs of the
plague—his very servants fled from him in terror; and unless some one
was found to help the sufferer from love even stronger than fear of
death, he was left to perish alone; for the plague was fearfully
infectious. When a door was marked with a cross, the sign that the
fearful scourge had entered the house, it was shunned by all but the
driver of the dead-cart—that gloomy conveyance which moved slowly
through the silent streets to carry away the bodies of those who had
sunk beneath the terrible disease!”
“Was London ever in such a horrible state?” cried Bat Nayland; “it must
have been a thousand times worse than the cholera!”
[Illustration: THE PLAGUE IN LONDON.]
“What I have told you about it I believe to be strictly true; I leave
you all, however, to judge whether what I am about to relate can be so.
“In a small house, at the time when the plague was raging, dwelt a widow
with five young children. She loved them with the fondest, truest love:
they were all that were left her in the world. From the first appearance
of the plague in London her heart had been full of painful anxiety—far
less for herself than for them. Determined to take every human
precaution to guard her little ones from danger, she forbade them to
quit the house, which she only left herself in order to procure food,
holding a handkerchief steeped in vinegar before her face, as far as
possible to keep out infection. Her anxiety became yet more distressing
when she saw one morning on the door of the very opposite house the
fatal sign marked, and below it chalked the heart-touching words, ‘Lord
have mercy upon us!’
“That day the mother was compelled to go out for bread. She left her
home with a very heavy heart, first looking earnestly upon all and each
of her children, to see if they yet appeared healthy and well, repeating
her command that none should stir out, and inwardly breathing a prayer
that the Almighty would preserve them during her absence.
“As she returned with hurried steps towards her home, shuddering at the
recollection of the sights of horror which she had seen in the course of
her walk, with terror she observed her eldest son _playing upon the very
threshold of the infected house_, and trying to imitate with a piece of
chalk the dreadful signs upon the door!”
“The little idiot!”—“He must have been without his senses!”—“What did
the poor mother do?” were the exclamations which burst from Thorn’s
listeners.
“She could not speak, in the transport of her anger and grief: she
seized him by the arm, and dragged him into her own house, with feelings
which only a mother can understand. She found her four other children
assembled in her little parlour, amusing themselves by—would you believe
it?—playing at _catching the plague_!”
“Oh no, no!” cried the children at once. “You told us that we should
judge whether the story were true, and we are sure that this cannot be
true!”
“And why not?” inquired the teacher.
“Because,” answered Bat, replying for the rest, “the plague was too
horrible a thing to make a joke of! Just at a time when their mother was
so anxious, when thousands were suffering so much around them—no, no!
that would have been too bad; they could never have made game of the
plague!”
“And yet what were my pupils doing ten minutes ago but making game of a
far worse disease than the plague—the fatal disease of sin? Its spots
are blacker, the pain it gives more terrible: often has it caused the
death of the body, and, except where repented of and forsaken, the
death, the endless death of the soul! Oh, my children! it may be your
lot, as it was that mother’s, to be _obliged_ to go out and meet the
danger, for the Almighty may have seen good to place you in situations
of great temptation; but if so, take every means of guarding your own
hearts, by faith, watchfulness, and prayer. But oh, never wilfully throw
yourselves into temptation—_do not play upon the threshold of the
infected house_—do not trifle with the danger which it is possible to
avoid: and when inclined to think lightly or speak lightly of that which
brought ruin and death into the world, remember that _fools make a mock
at sin_, but that to free us from its terrible disease, and the fatal
consequences which it brings, cost the Eternal Son of the Most High
tears, blood, and even life itself!”
Fools make a mock at sin; but oh,
God’s wiser children do not so:
They know too well the strife with sin,
How hard the battle is to win;
They laugh not at the wound within,
For they its danger know.
Oh, guide thy mirth by wisdom’s rules,
For sorrow ends the laugh of fools!
Fools make a mock at sin; but oh,
Lost, guilty spirits do not so:
They know too well the price it cost;
They know through it that heaven was lost.
No drowning seaman, tempest-tost,
Jests as he sinks below!
Oh, guide thy mirth by wisdom’s rules,
For sorrow ends the laugh of fools!
Fools make a mock at sin; but oh,
God’s holy angels do not so:
For they upon the Cross have gazed,—
The Cross which sin, _our_ sin, had raised,—
And viewed all wondering and amazed,
A Saviour’s life-blood flow!
Then write these words thy heart within,—
Fools, and fools only, mock at sin!
[Illustration: [man on bridge]]