feelings far outrun their judgment. All sorts of exaggerated notions therefore have been entertained about the present disorder, and in particular it has been represented as a punishment sent by God for our great and universal sinfulness. Undoubtedly our sins are great, and it would be a most false and mischievous representation which should endeavour to palliate them. But the aspect of the present disease seems to me by no means that of a judgment of God upon our sins. Of course no one could dare to speak of it as a judgment in the cases of individuals; we know that it would be equally false and uncharitable to think that they whom it carried off were greater sinners than those whom it spared. And with regard to the nation, it has not hitherto been in any degree so destructive as to weaken the power or diminish the resources of the country; in fact, nationally speaking, it has been no more felt than the ordinary diseases of every common season. On the contrary, far from regarding it as a judgment of God in His anger, it seems to me to bear far more of the character of a chastening given in His mercy. Both to individuals and publicly, it is capable of being most profitable, and has in fact in a great many instances actually been so. As I said on a former occasion, it has warned them most usefully of the uncertainty of life, while it has encouraged temperance, and called forth a consider

able exertion of active charity. It has been a timely interruption to political violence, and has given men a subject of common interest, on which not only they could not quarrel, but which placed them towards each other in relations of mutual kindness; and though, like all other chastisement, it "seemeth for the present not to be joyous, but grievous," and though we may lawfully pray to be delivered from it, as from all other visitations of pain and suffering; yet we must feel at the same time that we cannot certainly know whether it is best for us that our prayer should be answered; and assuredly if it be not answered, we may be certain that the refusal does not proceed from God's anger, but from His fatherly love.

How is it then, it may be asked, that we read so often in the Old Testament of pestilence sent as a judgment for sins past, not as a chastisement to warn from sins to come? There are several answers to be made to this question. In the first place, the visitations there spoken of differ from the present case in some important particulars. The destruction was very much greater, and more instantaneous; that is, it did not offer an opportunity for the exercise of those virtues which have been called forth by the present danger. The sight of seventy thousand persons cut off in three days, as on the occasion to which the text relates, was likely to make men overwhelmed with fear,

or hardened by desperation; while the evil came in such a moment that there was no time for any wholesome preparation to meet it profitably, or to take any measures for lessening its dangers. But the great distinction between the visitations of pestilence under the old dispensation and under the new, may be best understood by reading the prayer of Hezekiah, composed by him in a dangerous sickness; and by observing how little it could be the language of a good Christian now. Hezekiah earnestly prays against death, because it would cut him off from God: "The grave cannot praise thee," he says, "death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth." Compare this with St. Paul's language: "Whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; and we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." It is manifest that a grievous disease falling upon a people whose promises were earthly, was a very different thing, as marking God's disposition towards them, from the same disease falling upon a people whose promises are heavenly. What was in the one case a sentence of death, is in the other a removal to glory. Then, if a parent saw his whole family dying around him, his wife expiring by his side, while he felt his own life ebbing fast within him, would he not have regarded himself as suffering the very last

extremity of God's judgments, in not only cutting off himself but all his hopes of posterity also; so that his name and race would be utterly put out? But suppose the same case in a Christian family,Christian, I mean, not in name only, but in deed and in power, and what before was the extremity of judgment becomes the utmost perfection of mercy. It is a grief for a parent to leave young children behind him, when he cannot but fear that the promise of their early years may in after life, when he can no longer watch over them, be wrecked for all eternity. But to be called to his Saviour with all those whom he most loves; to be released at once from all earthly care; to have done with earth not only for himself but for his wife and children also; to have reached his home in safety with all his treasures, not only with none to mourn as lost, but with none to fear for as yet in danger; the fondest range of hope could go no farther than to imagine such a rich abundance of blessing.

We know

Or to come to our own experience. with what an unusual degree of sickness we in this place are at this moment visited; that there are now four persons lying dead in this town, all of whom one fortnight ago were in no more danger of death than any of us here assembled. Are we to call this a judgment of God in his anger? God forbid! Much rather is it a dispensation most mer

cifully designed,-would that it might be received by us in an answering spirit! It warns us indeed with a striking voice, to become Christians in earnest with all speed; to put on Christ, and to put off all our sinful affections. If we do not listen to it, be assured that our continued health and prosperity is one of the most awful judgments of all. No sentence is so dreadful as that when God says of the sinner, "Let him alone." The pestilence may cut him off in the midst of his sin; but better even so, than to be year after year hardened and encouraged in it, and thus to be daily swelling its amount. But if we do become Christians indeed, then the voice which was so solemn is but the gracious call of a loving Saviour. The servants who were ready, busily employed in preparing for their Lord's coming, zealously assisting one another, and looking forward for the hour when he would visit them, they assuredly felt nothing but a bounding joy when, at whatever hour, in the deepest midnight, or the full noon day, they heard the signal of his presence.

If this day leads us to consider all this, to hear both in the sickly season immediately around us, and in the disease which is prevailing elsewhere, nothing but God's warning and earnest call, the chastening of his love, not the judgment of his anger, then indeed it will be blessed to us. But it will be vain and worse than vain, if with hearts