that if God shall permit it to enter anong us, we may be prepared individually for any event-I would rather say, let us be prepared now for any event, even though it be our own, or the deaths of those who are dearest, come when they may! we shall then be devoid of fear. In other words, let us be always zealously, conscientiously, devoutly engaged in performing our known duties to God and man, and blessed shall be every one of us, whom our Lord when he cometh, shall find so doing. It will matter but little whether it be amid the busiest hum and scene of life that we are suddenly summoned away-or led gradually to the tomb by the operation of lingering disease-or cut down by the earliest shock of the fatal plague.

6

It will readily be inferred from what I have now said, that I perceive very little propriety in public fasting and humiliation in the prospect merely of the coming pestilence. I acknowledge it. Did I believe that it was a visitation of his judgements' upon us as a people for national or public sins, I should think differently; but this belief I have given my reasons for not embracing. I have hinted that, even with our imperfect faculties, we can distinguish some of the good which under Divine Providence it may be intended to secure to the great community of men on earth. Who can doubt that it is doing more for the great and good cause of temperance, than all the temperance associations the world over? It is teaching the lessons and doctrines of the temperance reform, with a voice of awful power, and writing them in characters of blood and death! Woe to the world, if the impression be lost! It is calling forth the vigilance and activity of the health

police of every community it visits, and showing to all the absolute necessity of cleanliness, systematic and thorough cleanliness in our persons, in our dwellings, in the public highways, in every scene and place where men congregate and move. It is doing, I trust, more and better than all this; awakening in the bosoms of the thoughtless and careless, a conviction of the utter helplessness of man, and his entire dependence upon God, and deepening that conviction in all; calling men to ponder and consider their ways, and examine themselves as those who are responsible to Him, and who may be summoned at any instant to their account. Yes, and it is kindling afresh some of the finest sympathies of the human soul-disturbing the leaden slumbers of selfishness and making men feel the claims of their poor and needy brethren, upon their benevolent bounty and care.-Such are some of the benefits of the pestilence, moving as it does under the guidance of an all-wise and merciful Providence.

Do not let it be supposed that I think there are no sins for which it becometh us as a people to be humble, and supplicate the favor and forgiveness of God. All that I mean to be understood as saying is, that it is not on account of these, that the pestilence, if it comes, is to be sent. We have no messenger divinely commissioned like Moses of old to Pharaoh, to come in and announce this to us. That there are great and grievous sins, enough to humble us as a people to the dust, no man who looks at the national character with the eyes of a Christian, can doubt. Think of the bitter and rancorous party spirit, which, upon a thousand questions springing up in various parts of our extended em

pire, has enkindled its strange fire in the bosoms of millions of our fellow citizens. Think of the disgraceful scenes which have been acted in the metropolis, on the steps of the capitol, aye, in the very halls of legislation, of the freest, and one of the most enlightened and highly privileged nations upon earth. Think of the venality and licentiousness of the public press, which by its wanton and indiscriminate abuse of the purest of our citizens who may consent to become candidates for office, bids fair to drive into retirement, and to keep there, all whose talents and integrity and virtuous self-respect, qualify them to do good service to the state. Among the various orders of men throughout our vast country, there are still great departures from the pure and lofty standard of the gospel morality, which need to be retraced. There is still a heavy amount of intemperance pressing with its deadly weight upon our character as a people, notwithstanding all the progress of reform :-profaneness, gambling, and licentiousness, are still heard and seen and indulged in among us to a most alarming extent. There is a vast deficiency of that stern, inflexible regard to stainless moral principle in men's dealings with one another, which a christian nation should cherish as the foundation of all true excellence, in its citizens, and the security of every valuable public privilege. Oaths, I fear, are too much trifled with-reputation is too much trifled with. Evil speaking, which may wrongfully say true as well as false things of our neighbors, contrary, entirely contrary to the spirit of the gospeland scandal, which cares not whether they be true or false, betray the mortifying fact that too many are re

garding others' failings rather than their own, and in the midst of their own personal deficiences or vices of character for which they ought themselves to be humble before God, find, to say the least, an idle, possibly a malicious pleasure in marking or imagining those of their brethren. Truly there is enough to make us thoughtful, serious, penitent, as a people ;—to lead us to the throne of grace for pardon ;-to prompt us to look for the divine aid to enable us to walk worthier of the invaluable privileges we enjoy.

We can be at no loss, then, as to the duties to which the crisis should rouse us. Let it make us a people more sensible of our obligations to God-of our dependence upon his everlasting arms-of the solemnity of that responsibleness which rests upon us as individuals and as a community. Let it turn our serious attention to every thing connected with our national character, inconsistent with the, light and truth of the gospel of Christ. Let it awaken us to more diligent efforts for the intellectual and moral welfare of our whole country. Let it excite us individually, by setting forth examples of the most unbending integrity, the loftiest moral courage, the truest conformity of heart and life to the pattern and precepts of the Saviour, to promote and perpetuate all in our power that public and private virtuc, in every office, relation and rank in society, which while it is the duty, is the highest glory of a christian people. Let us remember, too, that our religion as a revelation from God has high claims upon us. Let us seek to disencumber it of every human addition and corruption, and recommend its divine claims to every soul in its legitimate purity and power.

Let us show before all men, that we view it in the most solemn light as the very truth of God-at war with all hypocrisy and sin-designed to penetrate, sanctify, and inhabit the heart;-that while we aim to strip it of all which the ignorance, or folly, or fraud of some have added to it, we are at least equally anxious to retain what the equal ignorance, folly, or fraud of others would take from it ;-nay, that while we honestly and conscientiously reject many which our christian brethren of other denominations receive as doctrines of the gospel, we have no fellowship with unbelief in any of its most plausible forms,-that to refuse assent to the authority of Christ as the special messenger and representative of God, as God manifest in the flesh,' seems to us, an infinitely more dreadful alternative than to misunderstand or misinterpret parts of what he declared. In a word, let us manifest every where, that our faith is a high, holy, self-purifying, self-denying faith that it makes conscience tender, and renders us more benevolent, more generous, more virtuous, more devout than others.

And in regard to the more immediate subject which has called forth these remarks, let us be led to cultivate a temper submissive and resigned to the will of God. Let us pray for strength to meet and to bear, whatever He may in wisdom appoint. Let us refrain from a single murmur or doubt of His goodness, even should the worst come. Let us make it an earnest petition that we may be prepared to live or die, as He may think best. For others, around us, let us be careful not to excite but allay their fears. If 'the destruction' must come, let none of us shrink from the duties of