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sufferings of his incarnate Son as our ransom from death and perdition? Are not other considerations yet needful to predispose us to give heed to those arguments which compel our assent to the inspired writings, and to incline us to realize their force and valueneedful to turn the scale against a rival and tempting world, and to induce us to apply our hearts, unreservedly and without delay, to our proper vocation as Christians-even a constant, importunate sense of insecurity, the thought that we know not what and how great disasters may await us, the presentiment of fearful disease, of mortal agony, and of the world's impotence to satisfy or console us? Is not piety at all times powerfully upheld by the reflection that the Christian hope, however valued in health and prosperity, is infinitely grateful in sickness-calamity-dissolution?

We cannot but perceive that it had been no additional and crowning proof of the gracious purpose of God concerning us, to have considerably prolonged the term of our life, and to have augmented its security and pleasures. It was no added token of the kindness and long-suffering of the Almighty towards the contemporaries of Noah, who were called to repentance by that preacher of righteous

ness, that they encountered no check in their career of self-indulgence, while the waters of the deluge were assembling against them; but were gratifying their inordinate appetites with the same presumption of their safety as before. On the contrary, we know that it was rather an evidence that divine mercy had well nigh done its work in their behalf; and that " every imagination of their hearts being evil continually," and the measure of their iniquities full, a complete and overwhelming destruction was coming upon them. And so we are apprized it shall be at the near approach of the last judgment, when those who will have rejected the provision of divine grace, so greatly commended to our acceptance by the troubles and insufficiency of the present state, and neglected to watch for the hour of their Lord's coming, shall not be recalled to a sense of their spiritual condition by any new, extraordinary portents of the impending judgment; but, like the heedless prey of the deluge, shall be "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage." Had God designed to deal with mankind on a principle of severity or unmitigated justice, he would have placed them in a more abiding and satisfactory condition of existence. He

would have surrounded them with an apparently firm wall of defence against the shocks of adversity. He would have refined to a higher relish the pleasures of this life, and have pushed into a remoter futurity the period of surrendering them. In other words, he would have raised his claim to our gratitude and obedience, without consulting for our indisposition to feel and entertain it. He would have made us indefinitely his debtors, and have left us to slumber out the season of preparation to meet him. But, urging this topic no farther, we submit that as the sufferings to which we are exposed are manifestly instrumental to sustain and invigorate the gratitude due to the Almighty,-instrumental, in various ways, to attach us to his service, and qualify us for the fruition of his goodness in a future state, those sufferings cannot have been undesigned-cannot be termed accidental:-unless our ability to perceive and adore the benevolence of the Deity was undesigned, and may be termed accidental-unless our constitution as reasonable and immortal beings, and our capacity to reap the fruits of holiness in the everlasting perfection of our nature, be merely fictions of our own imagination, and foreign to the purpose of God in our creation.

Let us not then pursue our inquiry into the origin and design of natural evil-for so we are accustomed to call the gracious chastisement of our heavenly Father-needlessly and unthankfully, as though no light had descended upon us from the Fountain of truth and wisdom; and far less may we repine at those characters of imperfection and instability which are impressed on all that is earthly. The alloy which mixes with all present enjoyment; the failure which menaces all human enterprise; the dissatisfaction which clings to all success and achievement in this world; those terrible reverses in human circumstances which the intelligence that scans and watches the heavens cannot descry; those destroying powers which mock our boasted dominion over the material world, and humble to the dust our lordship in the creation; the disease which is forming within us; the death that may surprise us in a moment;-in all these things, may we confess and submit to the correction of the Father of our spirits, and be admonished of those innumerable blessings which we are continually receiving at his hands, and which, in the absence of those sufferings which we wonder or cavil at, would be speedily committed to forgetfulness, and leave no peaceable

fruits of righteousness behind them.

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May all such tokens of a world which has fallen from its rectitude, and is destined to destruction, continually remind us of our true condition in the present state-that our rest is not here that our better life is beyond the grave; and thus effectually aid and befriend us in our preparation for a state of existence, where the goodness of God, as displayed in the immediate and incessant communication of happiness, is met by no impediments in the objects of his bounty; but is known in all its fulness, and beheld in all its glory; where, entirely subject to the Father of spirits, we shall be like him, and, being like him, we shall see him as He is.

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