all of us, as I said, to call our ways to remembrance,―to the young to consider the great and eventful journey upon which they are going,-to those who are more advanced in life, to consider the example they are affording.

May God grant that these reflections may dwell with us all! that they who are entering into life may remember, that to the innocent is promised the kingdom of Heaven; and that they who are advanced in it, may remember the mighty rewards which await those "who lead others into the way "of righteousness."

SERMON XIII.

ON THE FAST, FEBRUARY 27, 1806.

PSALM IXXX. 19.

“O Lord God of Hosts! shew the light of thy countenance, and we shall be whole."

THESE words of the King of Israel contain a very striking representation of that piety, which, amid all his errours, was yet the prevailing principle of his character. In some one of those seasons of national danger, of which his reign was full, "when his people were fed with the bread "of tears, when they were made a strife unto "their neighbours, and their enemies laughed "them to scorn," we see him in silence ascending into the sanctuary of God, and hear him soliciting the aid of Him" who sitteth upon the cherubims." Amid the darkness which surrounded him, he implores, not with the usual presumption of earthly prayer, that the God of Nature should visibly descend to their relief, but with the sublimer invocation that his religion taught, that "He would "shew the light of his countenance ;"-that he

would shew them what was the course they ought to pursue ;-that he would display to them the path which their own wisdom could not discern ; and then, with the confidence of faith, he foretells, that the prosperity of his people would return,— that the dangers in which they were involved would be dispelled,-and that they at last "would "be whole."

The sentiment which is here expressed by the Psalmist, is one in which every man and every age has participated. Amid the lesser evils of life, we are apt to trust to our own wisdom, and the wisdom of man is indeed mercifully proportioned to many of the common evils which assail him. But there are evils of another kind. There are seasons of darkness and calamity to which experience bears no relation; when various passions struggle for the mastery in the divided bosoms of the people; and when the feeble eye of human wisdom sees not the ends which it is fitting to pursue. In such moments, there is an instinctive impulse which leads us to prostrate ourselves before the Throne of Him who inhabiteth eter"nity." Under a conviction, (which lies at the bottom of the human heart, but which adversity alone calls forth,) under the conviction, that there is an order in nature, and that there is a mightier Wisdom than that of man, which presides over the events of humanity, we seek to know his will; -we supplicate him to teach us what we ought

to do; and, amid the depth of our calamities, and amid the "dark waters" that surround us, to point out the way and the path that are his. It is in such moments that the necessity of religion to human happiness is most fully felt, and its power most fully experienced. The beautiful expression of the Psalmist is then realized;-the light of the divine countenance then rises upon us a senti ment more dear than that of our own wisdom,the grateful sentiment of duty-begins to animate us. In submitting ourselves to his laws, we feel the presence of the Eternal Lawgiver; and, confident in the light we have acquired, we return to the dangers and the calamities that surround us, animated with the belief of a wiser government, and resolute to perform the Omniscient will.

There has never been a period, my brethren, in the history of this country, when thoughts and resolutions of this solemn kind were so imperiously called for, as by its present circumstances and situation. The darkness that for so many years has been seen at a distance, begins to thicken around us ;-the maxims of ordinary experience, and the measures of ordinary statesmen have fail. ed;—and no human wisdom dares now to pene trate into the abyss which lies before us, or to foretell the issue of that mighty convulsion which we are doomed to behold. If we look around us, we see almost the theatre of Nature changed;-em pires and kingdoms coeval with our own, disap

pear almost annually from our view ;-the alliances of blood; the relations of interest;-the ties of religion;-all the charities of social life that centuries of improvement had nourished and confirmed, dissolve before our eyes, as if at the spell of enchantment: And over all the finest portions of the earth, where patriotism had erected its bulwarks, and learning its fanes, and piety her temples, we see the sanguinary tide of conquest prevail, and bury in its bosom the loftiest monuments of nations.

*

If, in this awful prospect, it is to our own country we look, there are circumstances of mortality to appal the most sanguine patriotism. While, but a few days ago, we commemorated the glory of our arms, we lamented, at the same time, the fall of that illustrious man by whom they were directed. Since that time, (short as the interval has been,) we have seen the mighty spirit that, by a kind of hereditary right, governed the counsels of a free people, gathered to his fathers; and, on a distant shore, that pure and upright mind expire,† which was carrying peace and tranquilli. ty to the millions of our Eastern dominions. New men and new counsels occupy the eyes and the expectations of the people; and while the unprejudiced mind follows them with its prayers, it is yet doomed to restrain any romantick hope, when it remembers how little former greatness has done, and how much former wisdom has been vain.

* Mr. Pitt

+ Marquis Cornwallis.