harden their hearts against calamities by the mere dint of reason, or rather by the mere instinct of nature; because if seriously regarded, some efforts would be required to avert the visitation.

But whether God afflict us in love, or strike in wrath; whether he afflict us for instruction, or chasten us for correction, our first duty under the rod is to acknowledge the equity of his hand.

Does he afflict us for the exercise of our resignation and our patience? To correspond with his design, we must acknowledge the equity of his hand. We must each say, It is true, my fortune fluctuates, my credit is injured, and my prospects are frustrated; but it is the great Disposer of all events who has assorted my lot; it is my Lord and Ruler. O God, "thy will be done, and not mine. I was dumb, and opened not my mouth, because it was thy doing," Matt. xxvi. 39; Ps. xxxix. 9.

Does he afflict us in order to put our love to the proof? To correspond with his design, we must acknowledge the equity of his hand. We must learn to say, "I think that God has made us a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." O God! "though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee," 1 Cor. iv. 9; xv. 19; Job xiii. 15.

Does he afflict us in order to detach us from the world? To correspond with his design, we must acknowledge the equity of his hand. It is requisite that this son should die, who constitutes the sole enjoyment of our life; it is requisite that we should feel the anguish of the disease to which we are exposed; it is requisite this health should fail, without which the association of every pleasure is insipid and obtrusive, that we may learn to place our happiness in the world to come, and not establish our hopes in this valley of tears.

Does he afflict us to make manifest the enormity of vice? To correspond with his design,

us. We exhort you to sensibility concerning the visitations of Providence: four ministers of the God of vengeance address you with a voice more loud and pathetic than mine. These ministers are, the tempests; the murrain; the plague; and the spirit of indifference.

The first minister of the God of vengeance is the tempest. Estimate, if you are able, the devastations made by the tempest during the last ten years; the districts they have ravaged; the vessels they have wrecked; the inundations they have occasioned; and the towns they have laid under water. Would you not have thought that the earth was about to return to its original chaos; that the sea had broke the bounds prescribed by the Creator; and that the earth had ceased to be "balanced on its poles" Job xxxviii. 6.

The second minister of the God of vengeance, exciting alarm, is the mortality of our cattle. The mere approaches of this calamity filled us with terror, and became the sole subjects of conversation. Your sovereign appointed public prayers and solemn humiliations, to avert the scourge. Your preachers made extraordinary efforts, entreating you to enter into the design of God, who had sent it upon us. But to what may not men become accustomed? We sometimes wonder how they can enjoy the least repose in places where the earth often quakes; where its dreadful jaws open; where a black volume of smoke obscures the light of heaven; where mountains of flame, from subterranean caverns, rise to the highest clouds, and descend in liquid rivers on houses, and on whole towns. Let us seek in ourselves the solution of a difficulty suggested by the insensibility of others. We are capable of accustoming ourselves to any thing. Were we to judge of the impressions future judgments would produce by the effects produced by those God has already sent, we should harden our hearts against both pestilence and famine; we should attend concerts, though the streets were thronged with the groans of

We must acknowledge the horrors of the objects our passions had painted with such beguiling tints. Amid the anguish consequent on crimes, we must put the question to ourselves which St. Paul put to the Romans; "What fruits had you then in those things, whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death." Sensibility of the strokes God has already inflicted by his rod, was the first disposition of mind which Micah in his day, required of the Jews.

If you ask what those strokes were with which God afflicted the Israelites, it is not easy to give you satisfaction. The correctest researches of chronology do not mark the exact period in which Micah delivered the words of my text. We know only that he exercised his ministry under three kings, under Jotham, under Ahaz, under Hezekiah; and that under each of these kings, God afflicted the kingdom of Judah, and of Israel with severe strokes. And the solemnities of the present day excuse me from the laws, binding to a commentator, of illustrating a text in all the original views of the author. We must neither divert our feelings nor divide our attention, between the calamities God sent

sence of the destroying angel sent to exterminate the nation.

The third minister of God's vengeance, exciting us to sensibility, is the plague, which ravages a neighbouring kingdom. Your provinces do not subsist of themselves; they have an intimate relation with all the states of Europe. And such is the nature of their constitution, that they not only suffer from the prosperity, but even from the adversity, of their eneinies. But what do I say? from their enemies! The people whom God has now visited with this awful scourge, are not our enemies; they are our allies; they are our brethren; they are our fellow-countrymen. The people on whom God has laid his hand in so terrible a manner, is the kingdom which gave some of us birth, and which still contains persons to whom we are united by the tenderest ties. Every stroke this kingdom receives, recoils on ourselves, and it cannot fall without involving us in its ruins.

The fourth minister of the God of vengeance, which calls for consideration, is the spirit of slumber. It would seem that God had designated our own hands to be our own ruin. It would seem that he had given a demon from

regarded as their punishment. And shall we refuse, in this day of humiliation, ascribing to this awful cause the strokes with which we are afflicted? Cast your eyes for a moment on the nature of the crimes which reproach these provinces. All nations have their vices, and vices in which they resemble one another; all nations afford the justest cause for reprehension. Read the various books of morality; consult the sermons delivered among the most enlightened nations, and you will every where see that the great are proud, the poor impatient, the aged covetous, the young voluptuous, and so of every class. Meanwhile all sorts of vice have not a resemblance. Weigh a passage in Deuteronomy in which you will find a distinction between sin and sin, and a distinction worthy of peculiar regard. "Their spot," says Moses, " is not the spot of the children of God," xxxii. 5. There is then a spot of the children of God, and a spot which is not of his children. There are infirmities found among a people dear to God, and there are defects incompatible with his people. To receive the sacrament of the Eucharist, but not with all the veneration required by so august a mystery; to celebrate days of humiliation, but not with all the deep repentance we should bring to these solemnities; these are great spots; but they are spots common to the children of God. To fall, however, as the ancient Israelites, whose eyes were still struck with the miracles wrought on their leaving Egypt; "to change the glory of God into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass; and to raise a profane shout. These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt," is a spot, but not "the spot of the children of God," Exod. xxxii. 8.

Now, my brethren, can you cast your eyes on these provinces, without recognising a number of sins of the latter class? In some families, the education of youth is so astonishingly neglected, that we see parents training up their children for the first offices of the republic, for offices which decide the honour, the fortune, and the lives of men, without so much as initiating them into the sciences, essentially requisite for the adequate discharge of professional duties. Profaneness is so prevalent, and indifference for the homage we pay to God is so awful, that we see people passing whole years without ever entering our sanctuaries; mechanics publicly follow their labour on the sabbath; women in the polished circles of society choose the hour of our worship to pay their visits, and expose card-tables, if I may so speak, in the sight of our altars. Infidelity is so rife, that the presses groan with works to immortalize blasphemies against the being of God, and to sap the foundation of public morals. How easy would it be to swell this catalogue! My brethren, on a subject so awful, let us not deceive ourselves; these are not the spots of the children of God; they are the very crimes which bring upon nations, the malediction of God, and which soon or late occasion their total overthrow.

III. To feel the calamities under which we now groan, and to trace their origin is not enough: we must anticipate the future: the third sort of regard required for the strokes

with which we are struck, is to develop their consequences and connexions. Some calamities are less formidable in themselves than in the awful consequences they produce. There are "deeps which call unto deeps at the noise of God's water-spouts," Ps. xlii. 8; and to sum up all in one word, there are calamities whose distinguished characteristic is to be the forerunners of calamities still more terrible. Such was the character of those inflicted on the kingdom of Judah and of Israel in Micah's time, as is awfully proved by the ruin of both.

Is this the idea we should form of the plagues with which we are struck? Never was question more serious and interesting, my brethren; and, at the same time, never was question more delicate and difficult. Do not fear, that forgetting the limits with which it has pleased God to circumscribe our knowledge, we are about with a profane hand to raise the veil which conceals futurity, and pronounce with temerity awful predictions on the destiny of these provinces. We shall merely mark the signs by which the prophet would have the ancient people to understand, that the plagues God had already inflicted were but harbingers of those about to follow. Supply by your own reflections, the cautious silence we shall observe on this subject: examine attentively what connexion may exist between calamities we now suffer, and those which made the ancient Jews expect a total overthrow. And those signs of an impending calamity are less alarming in themselves, than the dispositions of the people on whom they are inflicted.

1. One calamity is the forerunner of a greater, when the people whom God afflicts have recourse to second causes instead of the first cause; and when they seek the redress of their calamities in political resources, and not in religion. This is the portrait which Isaiah gives of Sennacherib's first expedition against Judea. The prophet recites it in the twenty-second chapter of his book. "He discovered the covering of Judah, and thou didst look in that day to the armour of the house of the forest. Ye have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many: and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool. And ye have numbered the house of Jerusalem, and the houses have ye broken down to fortify the wall. Ye made also a ditch between the two walls, for the water of the old pool; but ye have not looked unto the Maker thereof, neither have ye had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago. And in that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to plucking of the hair, and to girding with sackcloth. And behold, joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink for to-morrow we shall die. And it was revealed in mine ears by the Lord of Hosts, surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you." It belongs to you to make the application of this passage; it belongs to you to inquire what resemblance our present conduct may have to that of the Jews in a similar situation. Whether it is to the first cause you have had recourse for the removal of your calamities, or whether you have solely adhered to second causes? whether it is the maxims of religion this is a subject already decided rather than a question of investigation.

hatred, to fornication, and to fraud, the causes of those calamities!

2. One calamity is the forerunner of great er calamities, when instead of humiliation on the reception of the warnings God sends by his servants, we turn those warnings into contempt. By this sign, the author of the second Book of Chronicles wished the Jews to understand that their impiety had attained its height. "The Lord God of their fathers sent unto them by his messengers, rising up betimes and sending; because he had compassion on his people: but they mocked the messengers of God; they despised his word, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, so that there was no remedy," xxxvii. 15, 16.

My brethren, it is your duty to inquire how far you are affected by this doctrine. It is your duty to examine whether your present desolating calamities are characterized as harbingers of greater evils. Do you discover a teachable disposition towards the messengers of God who would open your eyes to see the effects of his indignation; or, do you revolt against their word? Do you love to be reproved and corrected, or do you resemble the incorrigible man of whom the prophet says, "thou hatest instruction," Ps. 1. 17. What a humiliating subject, my brethren, what an awful touchstone of our misery!

3. One calamity is the forerunner of greater calamities, when the anguish it excites proceeds more from the loss of our perishable riches than from sentiments of the insults of fered to God. This sign, the prophet Hosea gave to the inhabitants of Samaria, "Though I have redeemed them," says he, speaking for God, "they have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds." It was for corn and wine, that they cut themselves when they assembled together; or as might be better rendered, when they assembled for devotion. Examine again, or rather censure a subject which presents the mind with a question less for inquiry than for the admission of a fact already decided. We would interrupt our business; we would suspend our pleasures; we would shed our tears; we would celebrate fasts on the recollection of our crimes, provided we could be assured that God would remit the punishment? We "cut ourselves; we assemble to-day for wine and wheat;" because commerce is obstructed; be

plague is the forerunner of greater plagues when it fails in producing the reformation of those manners it was sent to chastise. Weigh those awful words in the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus. "If ye will not hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; then I will walk contrary also unto you in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins." The force of these words depends on those which proceed. We there find a gradation of calamities whose highest period extends to the total destruction of the people against whom they were denounced. "If you will not hearken," Moses had said in behalf of God, verse 14, "I will even appoint over you terror, the consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you, and ye shall flee when none pursueth you." Immediately he adds, "If ye will not for all this hearken," and these words occur at the eighteenth verse, "If ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then will I punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass. And if ye walk contrary to me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins. And I will send the wild beast against you, and they shall rob you of your children, and make you few in number, and your highways shall be desolate." Then he denounces a new train of calamities, after which the words I have cited immediately follow. "If ye will not be reformed by all these things, but will walk contrary unto me, then will I also walk contrary unto you in fury, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcase upon the carcases of your idols. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuary unto desolation."

Make, my brethren, the most serious reflections on these words of God to his ancient people. If in the strictest sense, they are inapplicable to you, it is because your present calamities require less than sevenfold more to effectuate your total extermination. Do I exaggerate the subject? Are your sea-banks able

precaution; because the thunderbolts fallen on the heads of our neighbours threaten us, and our friends, our brethren, and our children; or is it because that those paternal regards of God are obscured, which should constitute our highest felicity, and all our joys? I say again,

• The original word is so translated in the French bibles, Ps. lvi. 7; lix. 4. The French version, in regard to the former phrase, They cut themselves, seems to harmo

nize better with the scope of the passage than the English,

They rebel, because it follows, Though I had bound strengthened their arms, meaning their wounded arms.

have already received? Are your cattle able to sustain sevenfold heavier strokes? Is your commerce able to sustain a sevenfold greater depression? Is there then so wide a distance between your present calamities, and your total ruin?

IV. Let us proceed to other subjects. Hitherto, my dear brethren, we have endeavoured to open your eyes, and fix them steadfastly on dark and afflictive objects; we have solicited your attention but for bitter reproaches, and terrific menaces. We have sought the way

to your hearts, but to excite terror and alarm. The close of this day's devotion shall be more conformable to prayers we offer for you, to the goodness of the God we worship, and to the character of our ministry. We will no longer open your eyes but to fix them on objects of consolation; we will no longer solicit your attention to hear predictions of misery: we will seek access to your hearts solely to augment your peace and consolation. "Hear the rod, and who hath appointed it;" and amid the whole of your calamities, know what are your resources, and what are your hopes. This is our fourth part.

One of the most notorious crimes of which a nation can be guilty when Heaven calls them to repentance, is that charged on the Jews in Jeremiah's time. The circumstance is remarkable. It occurs in the sixteenth chapter of this prophet's revelations. His mission was on the eve of their approaching ruin: its object was to save by fear the men whom a long course of prosperity could not instruct. He discharged those high duties with the firmness and magnanimity which the grandeur of God was calculated to inspire, whose minister he had the glory to be. "Because your fathers have forsaken me," he said in the name of the Lord, "and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshipped before them; and because ye have done worse than your fathers, therefore will I cast you out of this land, into a land which neither ye, nor your fathers know," ver. 11-13.

Lest the apprehension of ruin without resource should drive them to despair, God made to Jeremiah a farther communication; he honoured him with a vision saying, "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words." The prophet obeyed; he went to the potter's house; the workman was busy at the wheel. He formed a vase, which was marred in his hand; he made it anew, and gave it a form according to his pleasure. This emblem God explained to the prophet, saying, Go, and speak these words to the house of Israel. "O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it: if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. Return ye now every one from his evil way, and amend your ways." What effects might not this mission have produced? But the incorrigible depravity of the people was proof against this additional overture of grace; those abominable men, deriving arguments of obduracy even from the desperate situation of their nation, replied to the prophet, "There is no hope, we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil neart," xviii. 1-12.

ter's house; see him mar, and form his vessels anew, giving them a form according to his pleasure." Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom to pluck up, and pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." The foundation of these hopes is stronger than all that we can ask.

In particular, we found our hope on the love which God has uniformly cherished for this republic. Has not God established it by a series of miracles, and has he not preserved it by a series of miracles still greater? Has he not at all times surrounded it as with a wall of fire, and been himself the buckler on the most pressing occasions? Has he not inverted the laws of nature, and of the elements for its defence?

We found our hopes on the abundant mercies with which God has loaded us during the time of visitation. With the one hand he abases, with the other he exalts. With the one hand he brings the pestilence to our gates, and with the other he obstructs it from entering; from desolating our cities, and attacking our persons.

We found our hope on the resources he has still left the state to recover, and to re-establish itself in all the extent of its glory and prosperity. We found our hopes also on the solemnities of this day; on the abundance of tears which will be shed in the presence of God, on the many prayers which will be offered to heaven, and on the numerous purposes of conversion, which will be formed. Frustrate not these hopes by a superficial devotion, by forgetfulness of promises, and violation of vows. Your happiness is in your own hands. "Return ye now every one from his evil way, and amend your doings." Here is the law, here is the condition. This law is general; this condition concerns you all.

Yes, this law concerns you; this condition is imposed on all. High and mighty lords: it is required of you this day to lay a new foundation for the security of this people: Return ye then, my lords, from your evil ways and be converted. In vain shall you have proclaimed a fast, if you set not the fairest example of decency in its celebration. In vain shall you have commanded pastors to preach against the corruption which predominates among us, if you lend not an arm to suppress it; if you suffer profaneness and infidelity to lift their head with impunity; if you suffer the laws of chastity to be violated in the face of the sun, and houses of infamy to be open as those of temples consecrated to the glory of God; if you suffer public routs and sports to subsist in all their fury; if you abandon the reins to mammon, to establish its maxims, and communicate its poison, if possible, to all our towns and provinces. Have compassion, then, on the calamities of our country. Be impressed with its sighs. Place her under the immediate protection of Almighty God. May he deign, in clothing you with his grandeur and power, to

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