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John XIV. 16, 17. "And I will pray the Father; and He shall give you another comforter,-that he may abide with you forever,-even the spirit of

truth."

JESUS speaks to a case of grief, impending on his disciples from his approaching death. And to what consolation does he point? In a world of grief this is always an interesting inquiry; and it has an especial interest now, that an unprecedented succession of disasters has made grief the pervading sentiment of the community, and some hundreds of lives have been publicly taken, not by human rage, but by the raging elements, fire, air, earth and water,-suffocated, frozen, dashed on the rocks, or sunk in the sea. A second, third, and fourth time Jesus assures his friends, that their comforter was the truth, and the spirit of truth. Believing that this is ever the best comforter, I wish we may apply it to our present sorrow.

I have as yet called your attention but generally to this subject ;* because the awful voice of Providence at first drowns all human tones, as we speak not loud when it thunders; because fond hope will find some little refuge in general and uncertain report, till sure and detailed intelligence expels it; because I feared to excite, any more, sensi* This discourse was delivered Feb. 2. The Lexington was burnt Jan. 15.

bilities already agonized, and to fever fresh wounds by handling; and because under the first shock of misfortune none of us are so fitted to learn the lesson intended, as on the arrival of calm reflection.

And now my chief fear is, not so much that our feelings have been too deeply wounded, as that the impression will be transient, and in a few weeks we shall live on the same as before. As the vexed billows in which vessel and crew perished have found their common level, and the waters ripple on as ever over the spot where that burning boat sank down; so human hearts lose their agitations, and the solemn admonitions of God are of little avail. I wish to show, that the real comforter is not forgetfulness, but truth.

And first, the truth comforts us by leading us to look beneath the external appearances of disaster. These we are prone to dwell on too exclusively. These make the intelligence, and occupy newspapers, pamphlets, conversation,-from the natural, universal curiosity to have an exact account. But this is not all. The man who saw with his own eyes that rocky shore of the Cape strewn with fragments of wrecks mixed with corpses of the dead, or with his glass spied ships still tossed on the maddened wave, saw not all. They who marked the column of smoke from that ill-fated steamer become a pillar of fire, saw but the surface of that solemn transaction. Nor do we learn the whole by all the particulars,-of the boats sinking, of a few finding refuge on those mercenary bales through which the ruin came, of two or three individuals reaching the land, and scattered trunks, fragments, clothes, floating after. It is well to know all these touching details, which have moistened a million eyes. But they are not all; I cannot sympathize with the sensibility that stops with them. And all these high-wrought descriptions, which rest in the mere outward scenes, of struggles and shrieks, of frost and suffocation, are partial and superficial.

I would not be insensible to the sharp distress of that awful scene, but there was something more there than the spectacle that rises sombre to the imagination. To express the truth by material emblems, as it cannot be expressed literally, there was something, like the asbestos, that burnt not in that flame,-something, like the ether, that sank not in that wave!—even the spirit of man which, as phosphoric light from the mouldered bones of the grave-yard, rises from every scene of carnage, desolation, and death, to Him that inspired it. Could the whole scene be made miraculously visible, of

spirits from below rejoining brother-spirits above in the presence of God, tempests would dwindle, hurricanes be unheard, the distance of two miles from the shore seem insignificant, and the mangling rocks hardly to touch the living creature and child of God.

Do you not believe the immortality of the soul? If so, this is not fanciful to you; and it is solemn trifling to murmur at the way in which God calls his children home. For the unbeliever, who thinks of the successive generations of men as rising and wilting like grass, I know no comfort. His imagination is left free to be absorbed in the external appearance, and this is unconsoling I confess. But that Christians should converse only of the horrors palpable to the senses seems to me violating their pledge to the truth and rejecting the comforter. Indeed, if we think of mere distress, how small a fraction of the whole is that we contemplate. What was that same night, when our friends sank, doing in the rest of the world? Collect all the death-groans of the nations through the same hours, and how many times would you measure out the agony in that blazing boat! And take the course of the ages, and how much of the universal grave continuous with the globe would their ashes fill! The outward, superficial view of life must be melancholy. To the real unbeliever the earth can be but as a sepulchre and death's-head. But to the believer it is a broken sepulchre, where the linen clothes are lying, but they that wore them, not here, but risen. He walks over graves, but the very dust is alive. And while the skeptic views the whole face of nature as made from the ruins of humanity, to the Christian every spot is sacred as having been some time a place of resurrection. The truth, the truth is the comforter.

But there is not merely a good in the surviving soul, that overbalances the evil to the body. This would show simply that God dispenses more blessing than injury. Here again the truth comes as the comforter. For that very constitution of the elements, which exposes us to occasional harm, is essential to our welfare. If water could not drown, it could not float, and we could insure life against it only by stiffening every wave and laying an embargo on all nations. If we will have no gales, the atmosphere must be a dead sea, and temperature unchanging. If fire must not inflame, it cannot cheer, and night must be the extinguisher of all eyes. That funeral pyre blazed on the same principles by which we are warmed.

The truth is a comforter still further, by showing that it is not wanton, but merciful, to affix penalties to the violation of natural laws. Could they be broken with impunity, all the sharpness of human circumspection in danger, and contrivance against defect and evil, would cease. Man would grow stupid, and recede to barbarism. But as he learns to ride these wild forces of the elements, how much faculty and invention is developed! The hope of good from coinciding with these mighty forces, and the fear of harm from opposing them, have been among the great educators of the human mind.

But still further, the truth is a comforter, by assuring us that suffering itself is sent in mercy. God plainly does not mean to bring up his children to be effeminate and worthless. He evidently does not proceed on the Epicurean philosophy. He would have us not weak or voluptuous, but strong, manly, and divine. Whose children here are most generously dealt by? Theirs who have been fed on delicacies, and housed from exposure, and exempted from tasks? Nay; do they not grow pale and helpless and miserable? While they that have been cast out into the buffeting of toil and trial, as learning to swim, have grown up able and joyful, the friends and helpers of mankind. The harrow must pass over the soil to make it fruitful, yet we repine under the harrowing of pain and grief, by which God would make us, his husbandry, to grow. Would the mother, whose child perished in the foaming deep, have had him sail luxurious through ever smooth and glassy seas? To have sailed so till three-score and ten, would not have done him the good of a single laborious voyage through changing weather over the wide and wondrous ocean. And we know not how many in their dread encounter with the waves, as they appealed to the God in the hollow of whose hand the ocean heaves, may have had a strength revealed in their souls that overpaid the death-pang.

And what the actual extremity may do for the sufferers, grief for the loss does for the surviving kindred. Your eyes strain towards the broken wreck and the burning hull, and your thoughts ponder the agony there. But I verily believe the agony of the sea has not equalled the agony of the shore; the brief pangs of nature measured not the distress of the long-quivering heart-strings, under which alone tears streamed, and eyes were bloodshot, and healthy frames swooned to the door of death.—And is it because God loves to torture men ? Oh no; but because he would make them great and

worthy of himself. Would we be mere flatterers and courtiers in the palace of the Most High? or, like the best citizens on earth, be sent on errands of noble enterprise and daring, to return to His bosom honorable and beloved? I heard a wise man say, that if the trials of human nature were less, it would have less hold on his respect. And it is to be feared, the wisdom of Heathen philosophers would shame many a professed Christian. "But that august Father," says Seneca, "bent on the unfolding of virtue, brings up us his children rudely. He is a severe head of a family."

And see how sudden and violent death enshrines the departed! To the eye of faith they grow bright in the flames, they emerge from the waters. We speak of our friends as taken from us by death. But are they not rather given to us, in the seal death sets on their virtues, in their images it stamps deeper than ever within us? And now that the first shock to our sensibilities of late events is over, the peculiarity of the affliction, which has stricken this society as sorely as any, may excuse me in some brief particular allusions.

The first loss was in the storm, of a young man, who had unconsciously been spending the last months of his life among his kindred, yet was not to be permitted to realize the beautiful Oriental salutation, and die among them. He was allowed to enjoy some of his latest sabbaths in the same holy place where he worshipped during the earliest. Though sudden as the rising and falling of a billow was his departure, his kindred have the satisfaction of remembering, that calm. and happy, and most favorable to a holy preparing for his summons, were the months that went before.

The next victim was the mature woman,† the fond mother, whom it was not my happiness to know, but of whom they, that did, speak in honor. She trod not the dark valley alone, as ninety nine of a hundred of the human race are obliged to, but with her children at her side. Let the bereaved reflect, that now she cannot be bereaved! And may not the young be brought up in heaven as well as on earth? On three faces more the sabbath-light might now be shining in this holy place, but for the glare of that fearful conflagration. But they are lighted with the eternal sabbath instead! And they have met more friends there, than they journeyed to greet here. Yet the

* Joseph Dennie, son of James Dennie, Esq.

+ Mrs. Jarvis, daughter of Thomas Cordis, Esq.

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