THE SEA.

Emblem of Everlasting Power!-I come
Into thy presence !-as an awe-struck child
Before its teacher. Spread thy boundless page,
And I will ponder o'er its characters,

As erst the glad disciple sought the lore
Of Socrates or Plato. Yon old rock

Hath heard thy voice for ages, and grown grey
Beneath thy smitings,-and thy wrathful tide
Even now is thundering 'neath its cavern'd base.
Methinks it trembleth at thy stern rebuke:-
Is it not so ?—

Speak mildly, mighty Sea!

I would not know the terrors of thine ire-
That vex the gasping mariner-and bid

The wrecking argosy to leave no trace,

Or bubble, where it perished. Man's weak voice,
Though wildly lifted in its proudest strength,
With all its compass-all its volumed sound-
Is mockery to thee.

Earth speaks of man,

Her level'd mountains, and her cultur'd vales,
Town, tower, and temple, and triumphal arch,
All speak of him, and moulder why they speak!
-But of whose architecture and design
Speak thine eternal fountains, when they rise
To combat with the cloud, and when they fall?-
Of whose strong culture tell thy sunless plants,
And groves and gardens, which no mortal eye
Hath seen and lived?

What chisel'd skill hath wrought

Those choral monuments, and tombs of pearl,

Where sleeps the sea-boy 'mid a pomp that earth

Ne'er showed her buried kings?

Whose science stretch'd

The simplest line to curb thy monstrous tide,

6

And graving Hitherto,' upon thy sand,

Bade thy mad surge respect it? From whose loom
Came forth thy drapery, that ne'er waxeth old,
Nor blancheth, 'neath stern Winter's direst frost?
Who hath thy keys, thou Deep?-Who taketh note
Of all thy wealth? Who numbereth the host
That find their rest with thee?-What eye doth scan
Thy secret annal, from creation lock'd

Close in those dark, unfathomable cells,

Which he who visiteth, hath ne'er returned
Among the living?

Still but one reply?

Do all thine echoing depths, and crested waves,
Make the same answer ?-Of that one dread name,
Which he who deepest plants within his soul,
Is wisest, though the world doth call him fool.
Therefore I come a listener to thy lore,
And bow me at thy side, and lave my brow
With thy cool billow,-if perchance, my soul,
That fleeting wanderer on the shore of Time,
May, by thy voice instructed,-learn of GOD!

GOD IS LOVE.

I cannot always trace the way,

Where thou, Almighty One! dost move. But I can always-ever say

That God is love.

When Fear her chilling mantle flings,
O'er earth, my soul to heaven above,
As to her sanctuary springs,

For God is love.

When mystery clouds my darkened path,
I'll check my dread, my doubts reprove;
In this my soul sweet comfort hath,
That God is love.

The entanglement which restless thought,
Mistrust, and idle reasonings wove,
Are thus unravelled and unwrought,
For God is love.

Yes, God is love-a thought like this
Can every gloomier thought remove,
And turn all tears, all woes to bliss,

For God is love.

SERMON IV.

On the End of the Harvest.

JEREMIAH, VIII, 20.—The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

THE rebellious wickedness of Judah had now risen to an alarming height. Her Almighty Ruler had manifested through following ages the same consistent and peculiar kindness for her children. Calamities, the natural consequences of their own impieties, had fallen upon them in rapid succession. In proportion to the sins of Judah had her confidence in her own strength increased but God ever remembering mercy, even in his wrath, commissions his prophet Jeremiah to exhort them to repentance, to unfold the promises of the Gospel to the penitent-its fearful judgments to the obstinately wicked.

The preceding chapters of the Prophet, therefore, are occupied by his earnest expostulations with the Jews for their manifold transgressions, his lamentations over the just judgment of God, and his earnest and repeated efforts to win them to repentance for the past, and obedience for the future. The period for the predicted fall of Jerusalem, their city, was fast approaching: the Chaldeans, at the command of God, were about to bring their hostilities upon them : a people whose "quiver was an open sepulchre,” who were all "mighty men ;" whose arrows would “scat

ter slaughter and carnage all around,”

—a people as “in

satiable as the grave, and as terrible as death.”

It was under the anticipated infliction of this dreadful desolation from an invading enemy, which Jeremiah, for the merciful purpose of persuading her to serious reflection, supposes Judah to be now suffering, that she is made to utter the exclamation of the text, "the harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and we are not saved."

Disobedient as they had been, every rational hope of deliverance forfeited, still had the Jews blindly confided in the intervening aid of Heaven; but now the warning voice of the Prophet brings to their remembrance their multiplied sufferings unrelieved,-their interest in Omnipotence lost beyond the hope of recovery. The summer and the autumn had now glided away, and no arm was outstretched to save them.

Let me endeavour to apply the moral of the text, in its spiritual signification. The seasonable meditations to which it will give birth must be obvious to all. "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." The opportunities we have had of making God our friend shall be our first consideration: our unhappy condition, under the conviction of disappointment in our best hopes, the second: and the necessity of redeeming the time we have lost, the last.

The seasons of the year, as applied to the several stages of man's brief and perishable being, have been the favorite metaphor of the moralist in every age. Our Divine Instructor ever delighted to take nature as his model,