heaven; by these means you will perceive your daily advance in a state of holiness, and by these means you will be always able to defeat the machinations of the cunning sceptic, and to defy the utmost malevolence of the learned unbeliever. Without attaching too much importance to the wisdom of men on the one hand, and without despising it on the other, let us endeavour to make it subsidiary to the purposes of piety and virtue. Let those, who have the ability to learn, study diligently the words of eternal life, that they may dispense them to the ignorant; and let those to whom providence has denied the advantages of reading, listen and obey.

Thus, My Friends, under the influence of a Christian spirit, a spirit gentle, humble, and docile, yet firm, vigorous, and active, I do not scruple to affirm, that there is not one who now hears me that may not imitate with useful effects the character we have this day considered. Not one, who may not be serviceable in turning the hearts of some disobedient to the wisdom of the just; not one who may not be instrumental in extending the sphere and promoting the interests of Christianity, and not one who may not receive the everlasting blessing, when the Lord whom he serves shall suddenly return to his temple, to acknowledge his children and to recompense his worshippers.

SERMON XXXIII *

ON THE TRIALS OF HUMAN LIFE.

1 PETER IV. 12, 13.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you; but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory is revealed ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.

THE Scriptures repeatedly inform us, and the testimony of history and our own experience* confirm the sentence, "that man is born to misery;" that he is destined from his mother's womb to bear his allotted portion of those afflic tions which the crimes of his progenitors have entailed upon him, and that he inherits from his first parents an estate of toil and sorrow. Trialsjo and privations, and misfortunes, are then the lot of humanity; they are the merciful commuta tion of severer and everlasting punishment, bas als £ atlery

To Preached after a dreadful fire in the town of St. John's, Newfoundland. June, 1819.

merited by original sin; they are interwoven, as it were, with the branches of our faith; they are the test of our obedience, the proof of our resignation, and the means of our redemption. By being made "partakers of Christ's sufferings" we are called upon " to work out our own salvation," and so to become partakers of "his glory;" a glory which" in all time of our wealth, in all time of our tribulation," we are charged to keep in remembrance; and if we look on the accidents that befal us with this view, if we regard the disasters and disappointments of the world with the firm and vigorous eyes of Christian resolution, we shall have ample reason to admit, that in every dispensation of Providence there is pity; in every trial sent by the Creator, there is a compassionate consideration of the frailty of the creature, and "at the top of judgment" there is manifested a God of mercy and of love.

Constituted as human nature is, adversity is obviously necessary to soften the heart, to wean the affections from a too fond partiality to the gifts of external fortune, and to fix our regards on that immortality of weal or woe, to which our present state of existence is merely the channel. In the joyous dawn of life, when all is fresh and gay about us, when our kind Father visits us but in the balmy breeze of health, and sheds around us the unnumbered blessings of his overflowing love, we are much too apt to

forget, in the greatness of the gifts, our obligations to the Donor, and to use, and abuse his benefits, with trifling levity and thoughtless ingratitude. In those moments of delightful but visionary happiness, weakly conceiving that the glowing sky of our wishes shall never be shaded by the clouds of disappointment, we neglect the cultivation of that religious spirit which can alone enable us to withstand the gathering ills that lurk unseen around us. Miseries, however, await, and misfortunes will assail us, which human prudence is impotent alike to foresee or to prevent. Our hopes are blasted, our schemes are baffled, our prospects are darkened-we find, alas! too soon, that all these are "airy nothings," and that however the ardour of fancy may" give them a local habitation and a name," they have little of intrinsic value. Reduced to this distressful situation, where shall the child of calamity turn for comfort and assistance? Not to the friendship of man-he has seen its deceitfulness; not to riches--he has ascertained their impotence; not to pleasure-he has tasted its satiety; not to his own wisdom-he has witnessed its fallibility. He must say to God in the words of Elihu, "I have sinned, I have borne chastisement; I will offend no more-that which I see not teach Thou me." It is then in sorrow and penitence that he will return like the prodi gal son to his father; it is then that he will

.

revert with trembling hope to the Gospel, and read, with reviving faith, the merciful offer of his Redeemer-"Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls; for my yoke is easy and my burthen is light."

It is in times like this in which I now address you; in times, when public and private misfortune press hard upon us, when the spirit of man is sinking under the pressure of unforeseen affliction, and the heart is yet bleeding from the awful visitation of sudden chastisement, that we must apply for comfort and consolation to the force of religion. Stoicism may boast its apathy, and the insensibility of dulness may apparently shield the fool or the misanthrope from the shafts of affliction; but be assured, it is a Christian spirit, a spirit disciplined and practised in the school of Christ, which alone can give us real and permanent support; which can change our worldly grievings into that " godly sorrow" " by which the heart is made better," "a sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of.”

66

It is one of the properties of religion, to create good out of evil, to produce reformation from punishment, and to convert the trials of her strength into the triumphs of her faith. Let not then the present ordeal pass without its instruction, nor the crying offences of the season with