fliction, have you forgotten those days of darkness? Have you forgotten those cries of the children of Elom: Raise it, raise it, even to the foundation thereof, Psa. cxxxvii. 7? Have you forgotten those dead bodies of our brethren, given to be meat unto the fowls of heaven, the flesh of the saints unto the beasts of the earth; their blood shed like water round about Jerusalem, and nonè to bury them, Psa. lxxix. 2, 3?

In order to escape calamities so many and so grievous, we were reduced to the necessity of fleeing from the place of our birth. We were constrained to drag about, from place to place, a miserable life, empoisoned by the fatal shafts which had pierced us. We were constrained to present objects of compassion, but often importunately troublesome, to the nations whither we fled in quest of a place of refuge. We were reduced to the misery of being incessantly haunted with the apprehension of failing in the supplies necessary to the most pressing demands of life, and to those of education, as dear as even the support of life.

Scarcely did we find ourselves under covert from the tempest, when we felt that we were still exposed to it, in the persons of those with whom we were united in the tenderest bonds. One post run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another to adopt the prophet's expression, Jer. li. 31. to announce dismal tidings. Sometimes the mes sage bore, that a house had been recently demolished sometimes that a church had just been sapped to the foundation: sometimes we heard the affecting history of an undaunted believer, but whose intrepidity had exposed him to the most cruel torments; at another time, it was to a fainthearted Christian, whom timidity had betrayed unto apostacy, a thousand times more to be de

plored than tortures and death in their most horrid form.

Received into countries whose charity extended their arms to embrace us, it seemed as if we carried wherever we went, a part of those disasters from which we were striving to make our escape. For these forty years past, my brethren, what repose has Protestant Europe enjoyed? One war has succeeded to another war, one plague to another plague, one abyss to another abyss. And God knows, God only knows, whether the calamities which have for some time pressed these states around on every side; God only knows whether or not they are to be but the beginning of sorrows ! God only knows what may be preparing for us, by that avenging arm which is ever lifted up against us, and that flaming sword, whose tremendous glare is incessantly dazzling our eyes! God only knows how long our bulwarks against the ocean may be able to withstand those formidable shocks, and those violent storms, which an insulted God is exciting to shatter them! God knows . . . . but let us not presume to draw aside the veil under which Providence has been pleased to conceal the destiny of these Provinces from our eyes. It is abundantly evident, that were we to subtract from the number of our days, those heavy periods of existence, when we live only to suffer were we to: reckon the days of prosperity alone, our life would be reduced to an imperceptible duration; we should not discover any exaggeration in the expressions which Moses employs to trace the image of the life of the Iraelites, in the preceding context: Thou turnest man to destruction: and sayest, Return ye children of men: thou carriest them away, as with a flood: they are as a sleep in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

3. Let us reckon the days of languor and weariness, and compare them with the days of delight and pleasure. This particular must not be confounded with the preceding. There is a wide difference between the days which we have called those of adversity, and which we, under this head, call days of languor and weariness. By days of adversity, we meant those seasons of life, in which the privation of some worldly good, and the concurrence of many evils, render us actually miserable. By days of languor and weariness, we now mean those in which exemption from the ill of life, or the possession of its good things, leaves the mind void and dissatisfied.

Let each of us here recollect the history of his own life. How often has a man found himself a prey to languor and disgust, in the midst of those very pleasures of life, which he had conceived to be the most lively and affecting? Objects in which we generally take the greatest delight, sometimes depress us into the most intolerable languor. It is. frequently sufficient for exciting distate in us to an object, that we once doated on it: to such a degree is the will of man capricious, fluctuating, and inconstant. Parties of pleasure are sometimes proposed and formed: the place, the time, the company, every thing is settled with the most solicitous anxiety; the hour is looked to with the most eager impatience. The day arrives at last, the golden moment of bliss, and nothing less is found than what the fond imagination had promised to itself. It is a mere phantom which had an appearance of solidity, when viewed at a distance: we approach, we embrace it, and lo, it melts away into air, "thin air."

The believer, whose taste is purified, is undoubtedly better acquainted with this languor, when, amidst the pleasures of this world, there occurs to his mind, one or another of the reflections which have been suggested, respecting the vanity of all human things: when he says to himself: "Not one in this social circle, among whom I am partaking of so many delights, but would basely abandon me, if I stood in need of his assistance, did the happiness of my life impose on him the sacrifice of one of the dishes of his table, of one of the horses of his equipage, of one of the trees of his gardens." When stating a comparison between the tide of pleasure into which he was going to plunge, and those which religion has prccured him, he thus reflects: "This is not the joy which I taste when, alone with my God, I pour out before him a soul inflamed to rapture with his love, and when I collect, in rich profusion, the tokens of his grace." When coming to perceive that he has indulged rather too far in social mirth, which is lawful only when restrained within certain bounds, he says within himself: "Are such objects worthy of the regard of an immortal soul; are these my divinities?" Then it is he feels himself oppressed with languor and disgust. Then it is that objects once so eagerly desired, are regarded with coldness or aversion. Hence that seriousness which overspreads his countenance; hence that pensive silence into which he falls in spite of every effort to the contrary; hence certain gloomy reflections which involuntarily arise in his soul.

But this languor is not peculiar to those whose taste piety has refined. There is a remarkable difference, however, in this respect, between the men of the world, and believers; namely, that the disgust which these last feel in the pleasures of life, VOL. VI.

2 N

engages them in the pursuit of purer joys, in exercises of devotion: whereas the others give up the pursuit of one worldly delight, only to hunt after a new one, equally empty and unsatisfying with that which they had renounced. From that scanty portion of life, in which we enjoy prosperity, we must go on to subtract that other portion, in which prosperity is insipid to us. Calculate, if you can,

the poor amount of what remains after this subtraction.

4. Let us reckon the days which we have devoted to the world, and compare them with those which we have devoted to religion. Humiliating computation! But I take it for granted, that in your present circumstances, it has been rendered familiar to your thoughts. Christians who have been just concluding the year with a participation of the holy ordinance of the Lord's supper, could hardly fail to have put this question to their consciences, when employed in self-examination, preparatory to that solemn service: What proportion of my time has been given to God? What proportion of it has been given to the world? And it is sufficient barely to propose the discussion of these questions, to come to this melancholy conclusion: That the portion of our life, which alone deserves to be considered as containing something solid and substantial, I mean the portion which has been given to God, is of a duration so short, as to be almost imperceptible, when compared with the years which the world has engrossed.

5. I proceed to the last computation proposed. What is the amount of this total of human life, which we have thus arranged in different columns? What is the sum of this compound accompt of days of nothingness and days of reality; of days of prosperity and days of affliction; of days of tau