Mills of God


The proverbial expression of the mills of God grinding slowly refers to the notion of slow but certain divine retribution.
Plutarch alludes to the metaphor as a then-current adage in his Moralia :
Plutarch no doubt here makes reference to a hexameter by an unknown poet, cited by sceptic philosopher, Sextus Empiricus in his Adversus Grammaticos as a popular adage:
The same expression was invoked by Celsus in his True Discourse.
Defending the concept of ancestral fault, Celsus reportedly quoted "a priest of Apollo or of Zeus":
The Sibylline Oracles have Sed mola postremo pinset divina farinam.
The proverb was in frequent use in the Protestant Reformation, often in the Latin translation Sero molunt deorum molae due to Erasmus of Rotterdam, but also in German translation.
The expression was anthologised in English translation by George Herbert in his collection of proverbs entitled Jacula Prudentum, as "God's mill grinds slow but sure".
German epigrammatist Friedrich von Logau in his Sinngedichte composed an extended variant of the saying, under the title "Göttliche Rache",
translated into English by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow :
Arthur Conan Doyle alluded to the proverb in his very first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet. The allusion is found in the fourth chapter in a scene in which John Ferrier is confronted by two of the Mormon characters:
Doyle, Arthur Conan, A Study in Scarlet.
The proverb was used by Agatha Christie in her novel Hercule Poirot's Christmas, as a person quoted it when they saw the corpse of a man who had lived an evil life. It was also referred to by W. Somerset Maugham in the novel The Moon and Sixpence wherein it is used, somewhat piously, by a family member to imply a certain justice in the demise of the central character Charles Strickland,
During the Second World War, both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt quoted Longfellow when promising retribution for the extermination of the Jews.