And now, my friends, what shall we learn from this?

What shall we learn? Have we not learnt enough already? If we have
learnt something more of who God is; if we have learnt that he is a
God in whom we can trust through joy and sorrow, through light and
darkness, through life and death, have we not learnt enough for
ourselves? Yes, if even those poor and weak words about God which I
have just spoken, could go home into all your hearts, and take root,
and bear fruit there, they would give you a peace of mind, a
comfort, a courage among all the chances and changes of this mortal
life, and a hope for the life to come, such as no other news which
man can tell you will ever give. But there is one special lesson
which we may learn from the history of the flood, of which I may as
well tell you at once. The Bible account of the flood will teach us
how to look at the many terrible accidents, as we foolishly call
them, which happen still upon this earth. There are floods still,
here and there, earthquakes, fires, fearful disasters, like that
great colliery disaster of last year, which bring death, misery and
ruin to thousands. The Bible tells us what to think of them, when
it tells us of the flood.

Do I mean that these disasters come as punishments to the people who
are killed by them? That is exactly what I do not mean. It was
true of the flood. It is true, no doubt, in many other cases. But
our blessed Lord has specially forbidden us to settle when it is
true to say that any particular set of people are destroyed for
their sins: forbidden us to say that the poor creatures who perish
in this way are worse than their neighbours.

'Thinkest thou,' he says, 'that those Galilaeans whose blood Pilate