in this our present escape from the dread-ready. No painful retrospect will disquiet ful malady, let us attend to the things that our consciences-no anxious forebodings belong to our peace-let us cherish the terrify our souls. If we lead the life of dispositions, and hopes, and habits, the the righteous, we shall die their death— remembrance of which may cheer our we shall depart like them, and be with departed spirits-let us learn lessons of them-and our work shall follow us unto righteousness from the judgments of God the habitation of our heavenly Father. let us lay up for ourselves treasures in I only add, and let all join in the prayer, heaven, and then when our Lord comes,-Do thou, O God, to whom belong the whether he come in the first watch or in issues of life-do thou stand by us in our the second-whether this day or to-mor- dying moments-support our feeble limbs row-whether in the hour of our worship in their passage through the dark valley, or in the hour of business-whether when and receive them into their everlasting we are asleep or awake-he will find us rest, for Christ's sake. Amen.

ON THE AGENCY OF GOD IN HUMAN CALAMITIES.

A SERMON, PREACHED IN GEORGE-STREET CHAPEL, GLASGOW, ON THURSDAY, 224 MARCH, 1832, BEING THE DAY OF THE NATIONAL FAST.

By the Rev. RALPH WARDLAW, D. D.

"Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"—Amos iii. 6.

I NEED hardly say, that it is not moral evil | up from the land of Egypt, saying, You that is here meant. It is not sin, but suf- only have I known of all the families of fering. It is not the commission of iui- the earth: therefore I will punish you for quity, but the pressure of distress. From all your iniquities." This is the language Micah vi. 9, The Lord's voice crieth of unimpeachable equity, of ill-requited unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy Name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it"-I not long ago called your attention to the lights in which that prophet taught Israel, and teaches us, to regard temporal calamities,-namely, as the warning voice of God, as a manifestation of the name or character of God, and as a corrective expression of the displeasure of God; along with the grounds on which it is our wisdom and our duty so to regard them. The words now read from Amos are part of a similar appeal. By him, as well as by Micah, the Lord maintains his controversy with Israel. By which of the prophets, indeed, did he not maintain it? At what period of their history did they not give occasion, by their conduct, for expostulation, reproof, and warning? (Jer. xxv. 4-7.)

In the passage of which our text is a part, Jehovah pleads on the ground of his peculiar dealings with Israel, by which he had so highly distinguished them from other nations in honour, and in privilege, and in substantial blessing: verses 1, 2,"Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought

On kindness, and of injured honour. every ground, the threatened punishment was merited, and in mercy alone had the infliction of it been suspended. He points out the impossibility of his continuing with them,-ascribing it to their alienation of heart from him, by which they forced him away from them:-verse 3,-" Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" He then, by a variety of figurative allu sions, expresses the reason they had for alarm, and the natural connection betwee their character and his procedure towards them:-this is the general import of the figures, of which "we cannot now speak particularly." (Verses 4-6.)

"Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid?"-You can imagine-no, you hardly can-wha the effect would be, if, in a city lik our own, there were suddenly heard "the sound of the trumpet, the alarm e war"-the announcement of an approach ing enemy. What throbbing of heart what violent excitement! what silen: dread! what noisy terror! what bustle and confusion! what looking one upo another! what anxious questioning! what running together, for information, for the

mutual expression of hopes and fears, of the infliction of evil, in contradistinction wishes and alarms, of animation and dis- to three things-to CHANCE, to IDOLS, and couragement of sources of danger and to SECOND CAUSES. means of safety!-Now, when the voice This is a supplementary topic to those of the Lord cried unto the city, the cause discussed on the former text, from the for alarm was as real, and far greater, than prophecies of Micah; and I wish to be at the sounding of the trumpet of battle. understood, although without any very This is the sentiment expressed in verses pointed mention of them, as having refer7, 8. "The Lord God hath spoken, ence to the distresses of our own times, who can but prophesy?" A truly be- and country, and city. nevolent spirit feels it a most painful I. We distinguish the agency of Jehorestraint, to keep back either the warn-vah from CHANCE.- Chance is a word very ing of evil, or the tidings of good. This common in the mouths of many: but it is was one at least of the impelling motives a word of the meaning of which very few in the bosom of the apostles, when they said, "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard;"-and in the bosom of Jeremiah, when, having been subjected to the persecuting violence of his enemies, and having found all his warnings so unavailing, he formed the resolution of shunning farther suffering by silence: "I said, I will not make mention superintending agency. But the only of Him, nor speak any more in his Name: but his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." (Jer. xx. 8, 9.)

of those who use it have ever set themselves to form any definite notion. The truth is, chance is nothing. It is a mere term for human ignorance. When we say that an event has happened by chance, we seldom think at all what we mean. If we intend to say that it has had no cause,— that is atheism. It is the exclusion of all

rational meaning of the word (if a rational meaning it can be said to have) is, that we are in ignorance of the cause or causes of the event. The poet speaks truly, when he defines chance in these terms

"All chance-direction, which we cannot see.”

There is a natural atheism in the human heart, a constantly prevailing tendency to forget God. This tendency (alas! for There is an atheism, directly and properly our nature!) is more powerful amidst so called, which denies the existence of a the abundance of the enjoyments of life, God altogether. There is an atheism, than under the pressure of its calamities. which admits existence, but excludes all So true is this, that adversity has many a superintendence of human or created time been made use of as a means for beings, and of their respective concerns. counterworking the pernicious influence Such of old, was the atheism of Epicurus of prosperity, the former bringing back and his followers; which, however, had the heart which the latter had led astray. so far the merit of consistency, that it How rare is the case of a sinner brought associated the denial of providence with to repentance and serious religion by pros- the denial of proper creation. And simiperity and success in life! But the in- lar, though diversified in some particulars, stances have not been few, of persons have been the godless systems of some "chosen in the furnace of affliction," moderns. But certainly we might as well subdued and reclaimed by adversity. We have no God, as a God that takes no indare not say, however, that this is the terest in his creatures, and exercises no natural effect of divine judgments operat- superintendence over them. We might as ing on human corruption. They tend rather to fret, and provoke, and alienate. The sentiment of the text is the exact And there is, moreover, a sad propensity reverse of this,-that there is a God, and to overlook the hand of God in them al- that he directs and governs all things. together; so that men stand always in The sentiment is not to be confined to our need of having it pointed out to them, own world. It extends to all worlds. In and pressed upon their observation. It is all parts of the unmeasured creation, He to the solemn truth of the divine appoint- is ever present, ever felt!" This is the ment of calamities, that the attention is uniform affirmation, and the pervading called, and called impressively, by the principle, of the Bible. It runs through question in the text-"Shall there be evil all its contents, with an application such in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" as the most heedless reader can hardly We shall consider the Lord's agency in overlook. Its maxim is-" All things are

well have no God as no providence.

What I wish, then, first of all, to impress on the minds of my hearers, and on my own, is, that in the heavy gloom that hangs over our city, in the variety and accumu lation of personal and domestic, bodily and mental suffering that is endured, whether occasioned by the state of trade or the state of health, it is " no chance that has come upon us." It is the hand of the allseeing and all-disposing Ruler of the Universe that is laid upon us, and laid upon us in a merited and righteous judgment. II. We consider the prophet as distinguishing the agency of Jehovah from that

of God." At every turn of its historical | may say, in terms of the text-If "withdetails, we meet his eye, we discern his out our heavenly Father a sparrow falleth hand. No such thing as chance is ad- not to the ground,"-how then, "shall mitted by its writers, in even the smallest there be evil in a city,"-evil which affects matters. It is much more consistent with the condition, whether temporal or spirititself than the systems of some philoso- ual, of intelligent and immortal beings,-of phical speculators, who would grant a beings who are susceptible, not merely of providence in great, but question it in physical suffering, but of all the pains little things;-forgetting, first, that the that arise from the tender sensibilities of true majesty of God consists in the unem- social life, the sweet and powerful" charibarrassed universality of his superinten- ties of father, son, and brother," from dence,-in its embracing, without confu- which it is in times of public calamity, sion, and without an effort of thought, all that the most exquisite distresses arise? the endless complication of events, and all the immense variety of being;-and forgetting, secondly, how intimately and inseparably great events and small are involved and linked together-so that the continuity of the chain depends as much upon the least of the links as upon the greatest, the working and efficiency of the complicated machinery, and the evolution of the designed results, upon the minutest wheels as upon the largest and most prominent and imposing. The machinist, when he looks at the great wheels, is well aware, although his eye does not penetrate to them, any more than that of of IDOLS. the novice, on what little, secret, and I have said, that there is a natural seemingly trivial movements the effective atheism in the human heart. This is a revolutions of these depend; so that, position which some may be inclined to were a single pin taken out, or the small-dispute, as not only painfully degrading to est wheel in the unseen interior shifted our nature, but contrary to fact. Where, or broken, all might be impeded or brought it will be asked, do we find men without to a stand. Thus it is in the intricate some form or other of religion? And if movements of Divine Providence; as we religion, in some form or other, is everymight show you by ten thousand striking exemplifications, of which not a few, and the most satisfactory of all occur in the inspired history.

where to be found, it must certainly be natural to man. Nor am I disposed, taking the term in a vague amplitude of accepta tion, to dispute the truth of this; though In what strong and delightful terms is it may be remarked in general, that it is the doctrine of a universal and particular not easy to separate, in such matters, beprovidence expressed by Him who "spake tween what may be the suggestions of naas never man spake!" Are not two ture, and what the corrupted remnants of sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of an early tradition. Suppose it true. The them shall not fall on the ground without religion to which men are thus naturally your Father. But the very hairs of your disposed, we dare not, without impiety, head are all numbered. Fear ye not there-admit to be worthy of the name:-it is fore, ye are of more value than many spar- only one of the many forms of irreligion. rows. (Matt. x. 29-31.) There is The truth seems to be, that there is a hardly any thing we can imagine less in tendency to two opposite extremes, both apparent magnitude, in itself or in its consequences, than the death of a sparrow: -and, in the words I have just quoted, the inference is drawn from the less to the greater, in a form, and with an emphasis, most encouraging and cheering to all the intelligent creatures of God, and especially to all his redeemed children. On the principle of inferential reasoning, we

equally at a distance from truth and rectitude,-the extremes of atheism and superstition. Superstition is the offspring of guilty fears; and the general character of the gods of the Heathen, in many cases, indicated by their very forms, accords with the nature of their origin. Superstition ascribes every thing to some dreaded supernatural agent or other, every calami

On the ground of their utter impotence, their incapacity to do good or to do evil to their votaries-to save or to destroy, the heathen deities, are not unfrequently, in terms of sarcastic irony, and of a kind of sublime derision, challenged by the prophets in the name of Jehovah, to comparison and competition. (Isa. xli. 21-24 Jer. x. 3—16.)

tous or unpropitious incident to some or their common calamities-that it was malignant power of evil. But polytheistic Jehovah, the God of Israel, the only God. superstition, though admitting what it calls by the name of deity,-" Gods many, and lords many," is represented in the Scriptures as only one of the forms of atheism. Of the religion to which human nature has all along shown its proneness, there was an abundant profusion amongst those who "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, But we, my hearers, may be ready to and creeping things, and who worshipped say-we are very little in danger from this and served the creature rather than the source of error-the error of acknowledgCreator:" and yet of them it is said, "They ing other gods-the fantastic or detestable did not like to retain God in their know- absurdities of Heathen Mythology. This ledge." But if they did not retain God in is not, you think, (and you think truly) their knowledge, they were in reality one of your temptations. And I will not atheists. That surely is not religion, of at present urge upon you the various poswhose feelings and acts of homage, the sibilities of idolatry without your falling objects are either nonentities, or possess a down to stocks and stones, or prostrating being whose qualities are as opposite to yourselves to the lights of heaven. Neither those of Deity as darkness is to light: will I press upon you, how the world, in and atheists their worshippers are accord-all its forms of ambition, and avarice, and ingly denominated: "Not knowing God, pleasure, may take away your hearts from they did service to them which by nature God, and become the idol of your unfeigned are no gods," (Gal. iv. 8):-they were and undivided devotion. I will not demand "without God" (atheists)" in the world," your attention to the proposition, true as (Eph. ii. 12.) it is, that whatever occupies that place in Again:- while the religion to which your affections and desires, which God human nature has ever been prone is in himself ought legitimately to hold, is your truth irreligion and atheism, there has dis-idol; although the Scripture unequivocally covered itself, wherever the knowledge of justifies and sanctions the proposition, by the true God has been imparted, a mourn- pronouncing covetousness idolatry, and the fully consistent propensity to forget Him-covetous man an idolater, and affirming, to overlook his superintendence-to leave" If any man love the world, the love of him out of our thoughts. Thus it was with the Father is not in him." But there is the Jews. They required to be incessantly one species of idolatry, or of atheism, more reminded of God. They were ever, per- immediately connected with our present versely aud infatuatedly, prone to the su- subject, which comes under our third perstitious extreme-to let slip the remem- head, and to which, for a few moments I brance of their own Jehovah, and to sub- must solicit your attention. stitute for Him the gods of the surrounding heathen, imputing events to their agency rather than to that of the God of Israel. The text was meant, like many others, to remind them that Jehovah reigned; that Jehovah was the author alike of their calamities and their blessings-that the latter were his unmerited favours, the former his deserved corrections-that to HIM they were to cultivate gratitude-that to HIM they were to exercise submission:-that it was not Baal, it was not Moloch, it was not Melcom, or Ashtoreth, or Dagon, or the Queen of Heaven, or any other of those senseless idols, which they had multiplied to themselves " according to the number of their cities," that brought upon those cities, at any time, their respective

III. Divine agency may be regarded in contradistinction to an exclusive attention to SECOND CAUSES.

How frequently is something called NATURE-( a name which, though sometimes used for the God of nature, expresses, not seldom, a kind of mystical personification of some unknown existence, the employment of the term hardly, if at all suggesting any thought of God)-how frequently is something called Nature, in language and in thought, in a manner deified!-and not less frequently, second or subordinate causes are so contemplated and insisted on, as to indicate an exclusion from the mind of the great originating cause of all being, and the supreme uncontrolled Director of all events! In account

influence on your hearts and lives. The devoutness we lift our hearts to the throne disastrous inroads of the pestilential ma- of the Most High, but we must carefully lady into the bosom of our own city have add to our supplications the acceptable hitherto been, through the divine forbear- incense of penitent hearts and holy livesance in mercy, comparatively limited; for thus only, let us be assured, can our but who will say that our dwellings-who hope be on rational and safe grounds. will say that our persons are for the future What is the language of Britons here this secure? Signal benevolence has been day? If it has any meaning, it is that you manifested for averting the mischief by believe in the great truth of the constant the opulence among us. No labour of superintendence of God over human aflove has been spared; and as to the pro- fairs;-if it has any meaning, it is that he, fessional members of the healing art, they by the general tenor of his laws, manihave, by their conduct, most richly de- fests favour to the godly; but that he does, served the gratitude of their fellow-citi- and ever will, by the unchanging princizens, and have won for themselves indeli- ples of his government, reward the evil ble reputation. They have won it by the according to his iniquities. If the language fearless exposure of their own persons to of Britons has any meaning, it is that you the perils of infection in the discharge of are conscious of much evil-doing—that their hazardous duty, in their unwearied you deplore it in your own personal case; and watchful toils at the beds of the dis- and that you resolve to cease from doing eased and the dying. Ye opulent-ye it hereafter-that you resolve to be steadprofessional men, to whom I have now fast and immoveable, always abounding in alluded-let not the unfounded and insane the work of the Lord, which steadfastness prejudices, as I must term them, of some and immoveableness, and abounding in the ignorant and misguided individuals, damp work of the Lord, may justify your conyour ardour, or relax your efforts, in your fessions here, and procure your acceptance godlike work of well-doing. All that is in the day of final account. enlightened and generous, approve and Now, surely, never was there a louder applaud; and even the ignorant will even-call on Britons than there is this day, to tually feel shame, as they ought, for their uncharitableness and folly, while it is yours to enjoy, above all the praises of men, the gracious approbation of your consciences, and your God.

adopt this language in the sanctuary, and in all their future conduct. Let all ranks among us, therefore, as the best preparation for stopping this calamity-as the best preparation for that death, which, if But still, again the startling question not this calamity, some other cause will recurs, under all that opulence and me- speedily bring upon us all-let men all dical labour and skill have contributed to repent and reform-let men of every rank ward off the evil from our gates, are our consult this Book of God, which explains houses, I ask again, are we ourselves for the so clearly, and which alone can explain, future, with entire certainty, secure from with authority, because it bears the the desolating disease, and that frightful stamp of divine religion-let all consult rapidity with which it hurries its victim this Book, and learn what the terms are to the grave? Never let it be forgotten on which God is willing to forgive the that opulence and medical skill are but sinner-what the terms are on which they secondary means and causes, and that their can receive the assurance in their minds efficiency depends on the influential co- of their being heirs of that salvation which operation and blessing of our heavenly the Redeemer came to accomplish. They Father. Let, then, our devout, sincere, will find, that there is only one way in and ardent aspirations-let the devout, which the sinner can hope for forgiveness. sincere, and ardent aspirations of every It was said to a person of high rank, that inhabitant of our city ascend to him-let there is no royal road to any particular us thrust our tears and supplications before the footstool of his throne, before the great Mediator, that he will be pleased still to be around us, and deliver us from our threatening dangers and troubles.

But, then, my people, let me impress on every conscience and heart, if we hope for success to our supplications, that it is not enough that in a momentary feeling of

science. So in the chair of Truth, the teacher of religion is called on to tell the people, that there is no privileged road to heaven-that there is no peculiar road by which the high may reach it to the exclusion of the poor-no peculiar road by which the poor may reach it to the exclu sion of the high,-"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto