now, from all that God's word says, that that night is past! The morning, I believe, is very near: a morning more bright and beautiful than ever gilded the mountain tops; but a night, dark, dreary, and calamitous, we are sure, will precede it. I have alluded to the present state of the continent of Europe, and here let me notice one source of its night. The schoolmasters in France are now generally teachers of Pantheism. They are specimens of what schoolmasters may become, if we do not take care that they are Christians also; that they shall know and teach the Bible, as well as know and teach secular learning. The schoolmasters in France, it is now discovered, are teaching not only Pantheism, but Atheism, and Socialism, of the vilest description, in almost every commune throughout the land; so much so, that the Legislature has been obliged to interfere, and, if possible, to repress it. Germany overflows with Pantheism and Atheism at this very moment. Popery, I admit, is losing its foothold; and it is the probability, nay, it is my hope, that Popery and Pantheism will soon fight it out upon the stage of Europe, Satan thus becoming a house divided against itself, that the triumphs of the gospel may be hastened amid the chaos. And in the last days we are told that a night will come when the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light; the sea and the waves shall be roaring; the stars shall fall from heaven, and great political powers shall be overthrown, and men's hearts shall fail them for fear of the things that are coming upon the earth. And St. Peter tells us, in his Second Epistle, that "the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up." That is the night; then "the morning cometh:""nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." And, when looking at this night, which is coming on all the nations of the earth, what hopes, what feelings may we entertain concerning that which is so dear to us, our own native land! I do believe, that the judgments which have fallen on the continent of Europe, have, in some degree, been blessed to us. I believe that we, as subjects, are more attached to our great institutions; and that our rulers have been taught, by recent judgments, less to depend upon the brute force of bayonets, more upon moderation, upon goodness, justice, equity, loyal hearts, and a holy and sanctified population; I believe, too, that the recent epidemic, which scourged us so severely, has been eminently and widely sanctified. I hear it stated on all hands that our churches and chapels are more crowded than they have been known to be within the memory of man. I hear from all sources, that there is spreading amongst us a deep and insatiable thirst for something that will stand man in stead, if so terrible an epidemic should visit us again. We know the fact, that the great extremes of society-poverty and wealth have been pressed together by recent judgments, and that a deeper and a nobler sense of brotherhood has been diffused among all the branches of our population; and that this great country of ours-great, notwithstanding all its faults, its imperfections, and its shortcomings-is beginning to assume what Milton said it ought ever to assume — the precedence of teaching the nations of the earth how to live. May we not, then, venture to hope that those funeral bells which have been tolling the crash of thrones, the downfall of dynasties, the requiem of great nations, are about to change their notes to British ears, and to ring out a marriage peal, announcing that blessed day when the first and the last and the best tone shall be, "The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his bride hath made herself ready?" Now, in uttering such hopes, and in speaking upon such topics, I cannot but allude occasionally to social and political events; and I think it is right that I should allude to them. I do feel that it is not enough to furnish theological essays. It is my duty- it is my privilege, to try, not out of my own wisdom, but from God's own Word, to give living direction, and to bring forth things new, provided they be true, as well as old. Now, I am told by mercantile men that there is a prospect of what they call a "surplus of money," when men will no longer be able to obtain the same amount of interest for their money which they used to get, and that the mercantile world is frightened lest there be coming upon it some terrible crisis. Now, my dear reader, excuse me, if I call upon you to be on your guard; remember, that making haste to be rich, if you miss your object, is making haste to ruin. Remember, that in proportion to the chance to use your own phraseology — of a great fortune, is the chance of total and irretrievable ruin. Let me give you old-fashioned prescriptions- and depend upon it they are old only because we, in our ignorance, think that they are so "Be patient;" "Be content with such things as ye have;" ""Let your moderation be known unto all men." It may be, that our worst trial is coming; it may be that our commercial depression was nothingthat the failure of our harvest was nothing that the epidemic was nothing: it may be, that our sorest trial will be this surplus of money in the money market. We can hold pretty steadily the half-full cup; the full cup it is very difficult to hold steadily. The man who wraps his mantle tightly round him in the storm, lets it go when the sun begins to ins to shine; never is a church or a nation in so great peril as when Satan shows either of them all the wealth and kingdoms of the world, and says, "All these will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me." "Watch," therefore, "and pray;" "Let your moderation be known unto all men:" "Having food and raiment, be therewith content." God may be about to visit us by a new trial. Let us seek His grace, and His strength, to enable us to pass through it. Let us remember that "the morning cometh, and the night too." Let us be patient in the one; let us hope for joy and blessings in the other. .who Let me now say to those who scoff like him who called from Mount Seir, "Watchman, what of the night?” are too much in the world and of the world to think any thing about religion-to those who live simply to get rich -who, like Gallio, "care for none of those things,"-"The night cometh." And it will be to you an awful, a terrible, an endless night-a night whose first twilight will reveal to you the dreadful truth, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." To every branch of Church and State there cometh a night before there cometh a morning. There is a very solemn announcement made by St. Peter, that "judgment always begins at the house of God." Whenever you see great schisms in churches, great apostasies, great defections, great corruption of doctrine, you see judgment beginning at the house of God, which will fall with more consuming fury upon the world around. If, then, the Church of this land and I use the word "Church" not in its limited, but in its catholic sense, as embracing all Christians who hold the Head, Christ, and cleave to God's blessed Word- if the Church of our country shall give heed to other lights than the Sun of Righteousness, if its leaves shall not be for the healing, but for the poisoning of the nations of the earth, - if hers shall not be the fruits of the Spirit, but the apples of Sodom, all beauty outside, but all corruption and rottenness within, if her members shall learn to seek their nourishment in holy water, in baptismal regeneration, and apostolical succession, and such like figments and heresies, that ought to have been exploded long ago, if the soil on which she shall grow shall be the sustentation fund, or money on the voluntary principle, or acts of Parliament then the result -- -- - let every will be that she will become like one of those old trees that we meet with sometimes in our country, where the sap is dried, the wood is decayed, while the bark alone stands, and reptiles and all venomous creatures grow and breed amid its recesses: she will be like that tree, incapable of bringing forth and putting out leaves, only fit to be cut down, as a cumberer of the ground. But let the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ cease to quarrel, sect with sect, - let her rule and standard be the Word of God, let her light be the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, let the air in which her branches wave be the pure air of heaven, church shed its dead leaves, and cut off and cast away its dead branches, and seek new life and new vigor, and put forth new buds,—and that Church will stand and flourish and spread its boughs from the river to the ends of the earth. A night may come upon her that will strip her of all her walls, her defences, and her battlements; but life is within her the vitality that God gives and that God keeps, and that nothing shall be able to exhaust or to destroy. We must look less on the things that are seen, and more on the things that are unseen; our hope must be in the purity, the efficiency, the spirituality of the Church: for days are coming when it must be founded on nothing else whatever. - But to individuals, as well as to nations and churches, there cometh a night a night which is alluded to and intimated a thousand times the sure night of death; when the shadow that now darkens the threshold shall cross it no |