Wrath of man

“ The wrath of man in its most tempestuous rage, fulfills his will, and finally promotes the good of his chosen.
3. The wrath of man praiseth God, as he sets bounds to to it, or restrains it by his providence, and sometimes makes it evidently a mean of promoting and illustrating his glory.
There is no part of divine providence in which a greater beauty and majesty appears, than when the Almighty Ruler turns the councils of wicked men into confusion, and makes them militate against themselves. ”

“ O thou whose vengeance waits on sin,
Cleanse our souls from guilt within,
Ere the day of wrath begin!
With suppliant heart and bended knee,
Low stooping in the dust to Thee,
Lord! save us in extremity!
That day of wrath, that dreadful day,
When man to judgment wakes from clay—
Be thou the trembling sinner’s stay,
When heaven and earth shall pass away.
From the Latin, R. P.
The day of wrath, that dreadful day,
Shall all the world in ashes lay,
The last loud trumpet’s mighty sound
Shall wake the nations under ground.
Thou Great Creator of mankind,
Let guilty souls now favour find ”

“ The wrath of man, like the wrath of God, was to be known and feared; the evil-doer was beaten into the path of the righteous, not led by the law of love. Too much of this spirit exists at the present time, but seventy-five years ago the force of public opinion tended in that direction. ”

“ For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
9:18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
9:19 Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. ”

“ The least drop of divine indignation and wrath will create tribulation and anguish enough to the soul of man that does evil; what then would a full stream of that indignation and wrath do? " I will blow against thee in the fire of my wrath; that is, I will blow up the fire of my wrath against thee; it shall burn with the utmost vehemence." Thou shalt be for fuel to this fire, v. 32. Note, Wicked men make themselves fuel to the fire of God's wrath; they are consumed by it, and it is inflamed by them. 2. It shall be effected by the sword of war ”

“ It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hand by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder ”

“ Where then do they stand who entertain wrath and hatred indefinitely, for one, two, three, seven, ten years? Such is no longer human wrath but fiendish wrath from hell; it will not be satisfied nor extinguished, but when it once takes possession of a man he would, if able, destroy everything in a moment with his hellish fire. Even so the arch-fiend is not satisfied with having cast the whole human race into sin and death, but will not rest content unless he can drag all human beings into eternal damnation. ”

“ In that pure upper world He sits whose wrath it is. From that stainless sky of His presence its white lightnings will fall, "upon all godlessness and unrighteousness of men," upon every kind of violation of conscience, whether done against God or man ”

“ This heard, the tyrant did for rage begin
To whet his teeth, and bend his frowning look,
No pity, youth; fairness, no grace could win;
Joy, comfort, hope, the virgin all forsook;
Wrath killed remorse, vengeance stopped mercy’s breath
Love’s thrall to hate, and beauty’s slave to death. ”

“ Since the wickedness of man is still great in the earth, why do we not see the vials of unmitigated wrath, poured out upon its guilty inhabitants? Why do we not see the heavens gathering blackness and the red thunderbolt hurled down in flaming vengeance? ”

“ As though there would be a very great manifestation of his almighty power in what the fierceness of his wrath should inflict; as though Omnipotence should be, as it were, enraged, and exerted, as men are wont to exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath. O! then, what will be the consequence? what will become of the poor worm that shall suffer it? whose hands can be strong; and whose heart can endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of this! ”

“ What bungling, rusty tools, are us'd by fate!
’Twas in an evil hour to urge my hate,
My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed [1] ;
When man's ill genius to my presence sent
This wretch, to rouse my wrath, for ruin meant ”

“ I am the man, the remarkable man, that has seen affliction, and has felt it sensibly, by the rod of his wrath. Note, God is sometimes angry with his own people; yet it is to be complained of, not as a sword to cut off, by only as a rod to correct; it is to them the rod of his wrath, a chastening which, though grievous for the present, will in the issue be advantageous. By this rod we must expect to see affliction, and, if we be made to see more than ordinary affliction by that rod, we must not quarrel, for we are sure that the anger is just and affliction mild and mixed with mercy. ”

“ They goad and afflict a heedless man or one that is insensate. Indeed, as soon as they see a person, they assail him powerfully like wolves jumping upon their prey. From these proceed all kinds of grief. From these proceed all kinds of sin. Every mortal, O foremost of men, should always know this. I shall now speak to thee of their origin, of the objects upon which they rest, and of the means of their destruction, O lord of the earth! Listen, first, O king, with undivided attention, to the origin of wrath truly and in detail. Anger springs from covetousness. ”

“ And, perhaps, in his imagination, he sees that wrath about to be poured upon those who have the temerity to call in question a doctrine which he esteems so peculiarly sacred. It might be suggested to such a man, that the wrath which he supposes is about to fall upon those poor fellow-mortals, who have incurred his displeasure, by holding doctrines different from his own,—that that wrath, like the doctrines whose denial has aroused it, comes from his own evil affections, and not from Him who is divinely good and true. It will be much more dangerous to himself than to any one else. ”

“ In what spirit and with what weapons are we to enter the great conflict against the evil that is in the world?
The natural feeling of the heart in the presence of evil is wrath, and the natural weapon of wrath is force. To punish crime, to avenge wrong, to put down wickedness with a strong hand,—that is the first impulse of every one who has the instincts of manhood. ”

“ I have not referred to this history without reason, but that ye may learn that whether it be the wrath of a king, or the violence of soldiers, or the envy of enemies, or captivity, or destitution, or fire, or furnace, or ten thousand terrors, nothing will avail to put to shame or terrify a righteous man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But like the lion's growl of wrath, When falls that hunter in his path Whose barbed arrow, deeply set, Is rankling in his bosom yet, It told of hate, full, deep, and strong, Of vengeance kindling out of wrong; It was as if the crimes of years— The unrequited toil, the tears, The shame and hate, which liken well Earth's garden to the nether hell— Had found in nature's self a tongue, On which the gathered horror hung ”

“ Think ye that Heaven will long withhold its vengeance from atrocities that cry aloud to it night and day—that the innocent blood ye have spilt will sink, unavenged, into the earth? Fear and tremble, for the hour of wrath and woe is at hand! ”

“ What distress, What anguish, wrath, and bitterness Devour the wretch! fell rage and spite Possess his spirit day and night. And tear his heart; the fear of want Pursues him like a spectre gaunt. The more he hath, a wider mouth He opes, no draught can quench his drouth. ”

“ How unavoidable the destruction of sinners is; the wrath of God pursues them, and all the terrors of that wrath: Evil pursues them closely wherever they go, as the avenger of blood pursued the manslayer, and they have no city of refuge to flee to; they attempt an escape, but in vain. ”

“ Only those who have experienced the bitterness of a wounded spirit can form an idea of the distress he must have suffered. Compared with this anguish of soul, all the afflictions which befall a sinner [on earth] are trifles. One drop of that wrath which shall finally fill the cup of the ungodly, poured into the mind, is enough to poison all the comforts of life, and to spread mourning, lamentation, and woe over the countenance. ”

“ In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
7 For we are consumed in thine anger, And in thy wrath are we troubled.
8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: We bring our years to an end as a sigh.
10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten, Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; Yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; For it is soon gone, and we fly away.
11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger, And thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto thee? ”

“ The anger was for the hardening, the compassion was for the hardeners.
If there be this blending of wrath and sorrow, the combination takes away from the anger all possibility of an admixture of these questionable ingredients, which mar human wrath, and make men shrink from attributing so turbid and impure an emotion to God. It is an anger which lies harmoniously in the heart side by side with the tenderest pity—the truest, deepest sorrow. ”

“ Fear and hatred had come, and a burning wrath against the net that was weaving, she knew not how—a wrath and helplessness and a wrath against her helplessness. All her nature flamed against a lie and an injustice. ”

“ Wrath fires the inveterate song
That bids hell gape for one whose bland mouth blest
All slayers and liars that sighed
Prayer as they slew and lied
Till blood had clothed his priesthood as a vest,
And hears, though darkness yet be dumb,
The silence of the trumpet of the wrath to come.
XV.
Nor lacked these lights of constellated age
A star among them fed with life more dire,
Lit with his bloodred fame, whose withering rage
Made earth for heaven's sake one funereal pyre
And life in faith's name one appointed stage
For death to purge the souls of men with fire. ”

“ The vials of his wrath are filled from his implacable aversion to iniquity. All penal evils shower down upon the heads of wicked men, spread their root in, and branch out from, this perfection. All the dreadful storms and tempests in the world are blown up by it. ”

“ The dread of the wrath to come has sunk deeper into their hearts; and for a while they strive with all their might to resist their evil propensities, and to walk without stumbling in the path of duty. ”

“ IV. All this comes from God's wrath, not allayed, as sometimes it has been, with mixtures of mercy. This is the fountain from which all these calamities flow; and this is the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery, which make it bitter indeed (v. 3) : I will send my anger upon thee. Observe, God is Lord of his anger; it does not break out but when he pleases, nor fasten upon any but as he directs it and gives it commission. ”

“ The great thing we should dread in affliction is the wrath of God. Say not, Lord, do not correct me, but, Lord, do not correct me in anger; for that will infuse wormwood and gall into the affliction and misery that will bring us to nothing. We may bear the smart of his rod, but we cannot bear the weight of his wrath.
3. He imprecates the divine wrath against the oppressors and persecutors of Israel (v. 25) : Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not. ”

“ Wound upon wound, and shame on shame espieth,
Desire of vengeance so o’ercame his senses,
That he forgot all dangers, all defences.
XLVI
Uniting force extreme, with endless wrath,
Supporting both with youth and strength untired,
His thundering blows so fast about he layeth,
That skies and earth the flying sparkles fired ”

“ Then began the agony and uttermost conflict of what is worst and what is best in human nature. Then was to be seen the very delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs, and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and means ”

“ This is the climax of the last four words. Wrath is hatred in violent action. It consists of turbulent passions which disturb the harmony of mind and produce domestic and civic broils and disquietudes. ”