neglect, even from the lowest and most contemptible of men, is fit to ruffle the tranquillity of my happiness; and a civil attention, even from the humblest of our kind, carries a most gracious and exhilarating influence along with it. Let me never hear, then, that the poor have nothing in their power. They have it in their power to give or to withhold civility of manners. They have it in their power to give or to withhold friendly attentions. They have it in their power to give or to withhold kind and obliging expressions. They have it in their power to give or to withhold the smiles of affection and the sincerity of a tender attachment. Let not these humble offerings of poverty be disregarded. The man of sentiment knows how to value them: he prizes them as the best deeds of beneficence. They lighten the weary anxieties of this world, and carry him on with a cheerful heart to the end of his journey.

JULY 2, 1808.

SERMON VII.

[IN February 1809, shortly after the honourable but disastrous battle of Corunna, a national fast was kept-on the day of the observance of which the following sermon was delivered. In the fast-day sermon of 1803, the reader can scarcely fail to have been struck with the absence, not merely of any allusion to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, but of any distinct recognition even of Divine Providence. In this fast-day of 1809, the supremacy of God and of His government is not only very fully acknowledged, but very earnestly insisted on. The contrast between the two discourses marks a stage in that progress which this volume is meant to trace.]

PROVERBS XXI. 1.

"The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will."

Ir is consolatory to think that this earthly scene, in spite of the misery and apparent confusion which prevails in it, is under the absolute control of infinite wisdom-that the God who sitteth above and reigns in heaven, also presides over the destinies of this lower world-that every event in history is of His appointment-that every occurrence in the course of human affairs is in the order of His providence-that He reigns in the heart of man, and can control all its purposes-that the violence of human ambition is only an instrument which He employs, to carry on His government and accomplish the purposes of His wisdom. When we see combined in the same person the genius of an angel and the malignity of a tyrant— when we see a power that no human energy can resist, and this power directed to the slavery and degradation of the species

when we see strewed around his throne the mangled liberties of a generous and intrepid people-when we follow him in the brilliant career of his victories, and in the history of his guilty triumphs anticipate the new miseries which his ambition is to bring upon the world, it certainly brightens up the dreariness that lies before us when we think that he is only an instrument in the hand of the Almighty-that it is God that worketh in him to will and to do-that the heart of man is in the Lord's hand as the rivers of water, and that He turneth it wheresoever He will. It is the sublimest exercise of piety to refer everything around us to the wisdom of God-to acknowledge Him in all the events of His providence-to place our refuge in His wisdom in the evil days of darkness and disorder, and to rest our confidence on that Almighty Being who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over the theatre of human affairs. Such are the consolations of piety-such the elevation of heart which religion confers-an elevation which the world knoweth not, and which the tyrant of this world cannot take away. Life is short, and its anxieties are soon over. The glories even of the conqueror will soon find their hiding-place in the grave. In a few years, and that power which appals the world will feel all the weakness of mortality-the sentence of all must pursue him-the fate of all must overtake him; he must divest himself of his glories, and lie down with the meanest of his slaves -that ambition which aspires to the dominion of the whole earth, will at last have but a spot of dust to repose on-it will be cut short in the midst of its triumphs-it will sleep from all its anxieties, and be fast locked in the insensibility of death. There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. We live in a busy and interesting period. a new turn to the history of the world, and plexion over the aspect of political affairs. times shrink into insignificance when compared with the grand contest which now embroils the whole of civilized society. They were paltry in their origin-they were trifling in their objectthey were humble and insignificant in their consequences. A war of the last generation left the nations of Europe in the

Every year gives throws a new comThe wars of other

same relative situation in which it found them; but war now is on a scale of magnitude that it is quite unexampled in the history of modern times. Not to decide some point of jealousy or to secure some trifling possessions, it embraces a grander interest-it involves the great questions of Existence and Liberty. Every war is signalized with the wreck of some old empire and the establishment of a new one-all the visions of romance are authenticated in the realities which pass before us—the emigration of one royal family, the flight and the imprisonment of another, the degradation of a third to all the obscurity of private life-these are events which have ceased to astonish us because their novelty is over, and they are of a piece with those wonderful changes which the crowded history of these few years presents to our remembrance. Such a period as this then gives full scope for the exercise of piety. Let everything be referred to God; in this diversity of operations, let us remember that it is He who worketh all in all-let us recognise Him as the author of all these wonders-and amid this bewildering variety of objects, let us never lose sight of that mighty Being who sustains all and directs all. It is His judgments that are abroad in the world-it is His magnificent plans that are verging to their accomplishment-it is His system of beauty and order and wisdom, that is to proceed from this wild uproar of human passions. He can restrain the remainder of human wrath-He can allay the fury and the turbulence of human ambition-He can make order spring out of confusion, and attune every heart and every will to His purposes.

Let it not be disguised. There is ground for apprehension in the character and talents of the enemy. There is a wisdom. in his politics, there is a power and a rapidity in his decisions, there is a mysterious energy in his character, there is a wealth and a population in his empire that are sufficient to account for that tide of success which has accompanied him in all his efforts against the imbecility of the old governments. The governments he had to contend with were old, and they had all the infirmities of age. They wanted that vigour and impulse and purity which a revolution communicates to every department

of the State. With the one party we see an energy pervading every department of the public service-with the other we see the most important administrations entrusted to the minions. of a court, to the puny lordlings of hereditary grandeur-a set of beings who had nothing to sustain them but the smile of a minister, or nothing to protect them from insignificance but the blazoned heraldry of their ancestors. There is no denying that in France the military appointments are decided by the questions of merit and fitness and character. In the other countries of Europe-and I blush to say that even in this vaunted abode of purity and of patriotism, almost everything connected with the interest of the public comes under the putrifying touch of money or of politics-that corruption has insinuated itself into every department of the State-that men are summoned up into offices of distinction who are only calculated to cover a nation with disgrace, and expose it to the derision of its enemies that the public voice has lost its energy, and the united indignation of a whole people is often unable to drag to punishment those delinquents whom patronage has exalted and the smiles of a court have sheltered from infamy. This surely affords a heartless and a mortifying spectacle, and is calculated to alarm any lover of his country when he compares it with that dreadful energy which its enemies can muster up to overwhelm it. We see no imbecility there-no corruption in the military appointments of Buonaparte-no submissive accommodation to the interest of great families-the truth is, that his power renders him independent of it. In him we see vested in one person the simple energy of a despotism. He is so far exalted above the greatest of his subjects that to his eye all are equal. He needs not to temporize or accommodate or allure the friendship of a great family with the bribery of corruption -he throws open the career of preferment to the whole of his immense population-he calls upon all to enter into this generous and aspiring competition of talent, and it is a competition that has often exalted the veriest child of raggedness and obscurity to the proudest offices of the empire. I do not speak in the tone of disaffection-I speak in the tone of patriotism.

VOL. VI.

F