As I write these lines, another year is hastening to its close. It is a period which naturally leads me to converse with the past. I cast my eye back not only on the year which is soon to leave me, never to return, but on those

which preceded it. As I take this review, I am struck and affected by the vicissitudes of human affairs, which my own recollection, and which history suggest. I seem to look on an ocean, ever restless, and strowed with a thousand ruins. My mind is filled with solemnity, but not with sadness, for I see and adore in the changes of human things, the hand of an all wise and merciful Disposer. I encourage this train of reflection, for it serves to give sobriety to my views of life, and earnestness to my desires of that "inheritance which fadeth not away."

As I look back, I recollect friends and acquaintances, who were distinguished by health and activity. They seemed to defy the elements, and almost imagined themselves privileged against disease; and I have seen these arrested by sudden and mortal Vol. V. No. 1.

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sickness, their cheeks withered, their muscular frames reduced to a shadow, their elastick limbs stiffened and motionless as the clod of the valley; whilst others, who tottered with infirmity, who were shaken with every blast, whose laborious respiration seemed the knell of dissolution, have risen almost from the grave to take the places of the strong, perhaps to reap the fruits of their exertions.

As I look back, I recollect those who were nursed in the lap of affluence and ease, whose early wants were anticipated by parental fondness, who were decked with ornaments, before they had knowledge enough to be vain, whose hands no toil ever hardened, and whose minds not an anxious thought for subsistence ever disturbed; and I have seen these cast down by their own improvidence or by the hand of God from their giddy elevation, reduced to a scanty table and to mean attire, left to depend on those whom once they overlooked, forced to engage in occupations, which once they scorned; whilst others,

who were born under a lowly roof, and who inherited nothing but habits of toil and industry which necessity imposed, have been borne on a prosperous tide to unexpected wealth, and have awakened admiration and envy by their luxury and magnificence.

When these recollections fill my mind, I sometimes ask myself, what changes I should witness, should I be permitted to revisit this metropolis at the distance of seventy or a hundred years from the present moment. I represent myself inquiring, at that remote period, after families which are now distinguished. I hear of one, that every descendant is dead, and the very name extinguished. I am pointed to some poor labourer in the streets, and am told that he is the only representative of another. I hear of another, that its surviving members, wasted by extravagance and vice, occupy the lowest place in society. I visit the abodes of my friends, and I meet new countenances, I hear new names, I see not a relick which recalls those whom I love.

But the changes in human affairs, which my own experience suggests, though solemn and affecting, are still slight, when compared with those which history unfolds to me. As I traverse past ages, what astonishing reverses crowd on my mind. I see falling thrones; I see humbled, deserted, and murdered princes, and sometimes the crown plucked from its hereditary possessor, to adorn a brow

which once, perhaps, was covered with the sweat of humble industry. I see vast empires

which were reared by the toils of ages, now sinking under their unwieldy weight, now overwhelmed by conquest, now desolated by barbarous invaders whom they had long despised. When I repair, in thought, to the eastern world, the earliest seat of arts, refinement, and learning, I am every where called to ponder and mourn over the ruins of ancient greatness. The hissing snake admonishes me to view at a distance the fallen towers of Babylon; and I labour in vain, to search out the spot on which Niniveh reared her walls and palaces.

At these recollections, my heart sometimes sinks within me. But I look above and around me. I see the sun shining on me with as bright and cheering beams as he shed on men of former ages. I see the fields arrayed in verdure, as fresh and fair as saluted the eyes of departed generations. I see, that whilst the labours of men have crumbled to dust, the works of God survive. In the constancy of nature, I learn the unchangeable majesty, glory, and benevolence of its author. I learn, that amidst the prostrated thrones of mortals, one throne is eternal; that, amidst the defeated schemes of man, the counsels of God stand for ever. Instructed by Jesus Christ, I look forward to the great result of these solemn vicissitudes of human affairs, and I rejoice in the persua

sion, that all are tending to the display of the perfections of God, to the triumphs of truth and virtue, and to the glory and felicity of creation. I feel, that the spirit within me, which retraces the past, and lives by hope in futurity, is an imperishable principle, that it is destined to survive the

changes of material systems, and that if purified by the vicissitudes of this transitory life, it will shine as the sun, with perpetual splendour, in the kingdom of my Father.-In this hope, shall I not be tranquil amidst the fluctuations of society and the convulsions of nature.

In no respect is the difference of present manners more to be lamented than in the diminished attention which is given to the Scriptures of divine truth. Once they were esteemed a part of the indispensable furniture of every family. The child was taught to spell out their contents, while the old delighted to pore over the sacred pages, till their subjects were as familiar to the understanding and as prompt to the memory as the volume itself was common to the sight and ready to the hand. Use, instead of diminishing, confirmed that reverence for the book of God, which was generated almost in the cradle and grew up in the school; so that instances were frequent of men, who knew much of their bible, but who knew little besides.

With many the case is now reversed. Every thing is eagerly read but that volume which would teach us to read without danger of corruption and without waste of application. The number of those who profess to read has, of late years, surprisingly in

creased; but in this increase of readers, are there not many who look into books only to diversify the forms of idle amusement; who read not to profit, but to play; not to learn more rapidly, but to trifle more seriously? For this neglect it is more easy to account than to apologize; for it is not difficult to perceive that the prodigious multiplication of books in this superficial age, of books adapted to every possible variety of capacity and taste, and easily accessible to every rank of society, has either jostled the Bible from its place, or buried it from notice; so that those who formerly read it because it was the only volume they possessed, might be surprised to find, if they were now alive, with how many it is the only volume which is not thought worth possessing.

The Bible, it is true, is not a book which is to be made popular by our commendations; still it may be useful to remind the busy, that they would not waste their time, the elegant that they would not hurt their taste, the gay that they would not spoil.

their temper, and the philosophick that they would not dishonour their superiour sagacity, by reading and even remembering the writings of revelation. We shall, therefore, attempt to show, that this book has claims upon your attention which no other book presents.

In the first place, it professes to contain several revelations from God to man, made at different times, and accommodated to the successive capacities and wants of mankind. It records actions which no unaided human power could perform, and discloses truths which no human understanding alone is able to discover. These are lofty pretensions, sufficient, we should imagine, to awaken the curiosity of the most sluggish mind; and, if they carry no absurdity upon the face of them, worthy of being diligently examined. Other books, it is true, make similar pretences, and we rejoice in the opportunity of comparison. Go read, if you can, a chapter in the Koran, or amuse yourself with the heathen mythologies; and then take your Bible from the shelf, and though you may lay it by with incredulity or shut it up with disappointment, you will find no absurdities to laugh at, no extravagances to excuse, no enthusiasm to transport, and no artifices to entrap your judgment.

2. Besides the miraculous facts and supernatural truths which it contains, this book professes to teach a kind of practical wisdom, which was never before attained in the moral instructions of phi

losophers. It treats of the most interesting subjects in the world, the actual condition, the moral duties, and the future destination of man. Here you find them discussed, not with the doubts, the speculations, and anxieties with which the ancients were accustomed to reason on the subject, but in the unhesitating and unretracting language of men who are confident of the supernatural communications they had received. They uniformly talk to you in the lofty address of teachers who know that they are speaking to immortal spirits. If any man wishes or suspects that he may survive the dissolution of the body, and live again in some oth er state of existence, he must be either stupid or perverse, if he does not eagerly explore what the Scriptures contain on this subject.

3. But even if this book did not record the revelations of God's will; if it told us nothing of our origin, our duty, or our destination; if it did not address itself either to our hopes or our fears, and were nothing more, indeed, than a mere human composition; still it is worthy of being attended to as containing the oldest and the most authentick documents of primitive history which are now extant. The book of Genesis professes to relate the origin of the human race, their dispersions, their settlements, and their augmentation. The narration extends back to a period which no records, even of the oldest nations, remain to illustrate; and, when it joins the

tenour of profane history, it is confirmed by the current traditions of many nations, and is uncontradicted by the authentick memorials of any. We refer now principally to the historical portions of the Old Testament; and here we venture to assert, that the celebrated nations of Greece and Rome do not present so interesting a picture to the philosophical historian as the little people of the Jews. The former followed the usual laws of national progress and decline. During their national existence, they exhibited those various political convulsions which we are taught, by the experience of ages, to expect in civil constitutions, as naturally as in the human frame to look for the diseases of childhood or the infirmities of age. From small beginnings they grew into importance, flourished in temporary grandeur, sunk in gradual corruption, dwindled or were overwhelmed by foreign invasion; so that the once mighty names of Greek or Roman are now heard only in the polished periods of the historian; and the descendants of those who bore them are mingled and lost in the barbarous multitude, who now trample with impunity on classick ground. With the Jews all is different. They are delivered, in a miraculous manner, from a land where they had been long enslaved. Without provisions and without clothes, they march through a trackless wilderness under the conduct of leaders apparently timorous, unenter

prising, and unpractised in the art of war. At length they settle in Palestine, a country surrounded with barbarous enemies, and remarkable (if we may credit the reports of modern travellers) for the sterility of its soil, though, compared with the wilderness of Sinai, it appeared to flow with milk and honey. Here they live under a government of which no man was the head; a government where all the laws, the ceremonies, and even the established customs were professedly derived from the immediate instruction of heaven. Whatever the philosopher may think of their story, it contains acknowledged facts which are not to be paralleled in the usual experience of mankind. Here is a nation, who worship but one God, while the rest of the world are, without exception, polytheistick and idolatrous. Here is a nation peaceably governed by a meek man who had no force at his disposal, who but proposes his laws and they are received, who writes down his sanctions and they are executed. He ordains a regulation unexampled in the history of nations, that every seventh year should be a year of rest, when the voice of labour should be silent, and the weapons of war should be hung up in peace. The ordinance is observed; but in the sabbatical year, no famine oppresses, and no invaders molest them. They are warned that, if they relapse into idolatry, they shall be carried captive into a distant land.