have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law." How severe a rebuke to our alarm, our discouragements! While Jesus remains upon the mediatorial throne, shall we yield under the pressure of difficulties? While he prays for his enemies, shall we abandon them? God forbid. At every instant of despondency, in every moment of defeat, let us remember the perseverance of Christ-righteous in its action, various in its expedients, against great difficulties, and long continued. If the church would receive its impulse from the action of Christ-if his mind were infused throughout the mass of his disciples, what indomitable energy, what unconquerable resolution, what glorious triumph would mark her career. 3. How strong is the encouragement from the assurances of success. If we are inclined to despair, let us look at the triumph indicated, the triumph progressive, and the triumph complete. It must utterly destroy our unbelief to master these great and glorious truths. Nay, it must create A BURNING ZEAL TO COOPERATE IN HIS LABORS, TO IMITATE HIS PERSEVERANCE, AND TO SHARE HIS TRIUMPHS. May God grant it, for Christ's sake. SERMON DXIII. BY REV. S. D. BURCHARD, PASTOR OF THIRTEENTH-STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW-YORK. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. "Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself."-EXODUS 19: 4. THIS passage has reference to the interposition and care o God's providence over the children of Israel. It is highly figurative. As an eagle bears her young upon her wings, so God had carried his people on the uplifted wing of his providence. Afflicted and oppressed, he had interposed for their deliverance. He had shielded them amid persecution and peril. He had discomfited and confounded their enemies; had declared his interest in them by miracle and manifestation. The pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night; the miraculous supply of food and water; the defeat and destruction of their oppressors, are all illustrious examples of the Divine protection and providence. A striking analogy may be traced between the children of Israel and our forefathers-the early settlers of this favored land. They too were oppressed and afflicted, and not permitted to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. At length they escaped from the land of cruel and oppressive laws, and came to this Western continent-the home which Providence had provided for them. Like the Israelites, they were sent into the wilderness to be educated, by danger and trial, for a noble destiny. Like the Israelites, they were compelled to do battle with the heathen and idolatrous tribes around them; but, like the Israelites, they were folded beneath the wing of a kind Providence. His ruling hand was as apparent in bringing our forefathers to this country, when yet a waste wilderness, and protecting them amid the perils of savage men, as it was when he led the Israelites out of Egypt and opened to them a passage through the Red Sea. If we study the features of their history, and the dealings of Divine Providence with them, we shall see how striking is the analogy, and how affectingly appropriate is the text to us as a nation. Or if we look back to the early history of this country, and contrast it with the present-if we compare its physical, political, educational, and religious aspects, then and now, we shall see how God has borne us, as on eagles' wings, and brought us to this land of heritage and blessing. The Past and the Present then, is the theme to which we propose to call your attention. And, in the contrast and review, we hope to find abundant occasion of gratitude to God. I. Let us, in the first place, contrast the past and present aspects of our country in a natural or physical point of view. It we go back to the landing of the Pilgrims, we see a band of heroic men and women driven by oppression from their altars and their homes in the old world. Like the Israelites, they had dared the waste of waters, the tempest and the cold, in search of a country, where God had planted the wilderness, as the place of their wor ship, and reared the mountain as the altar on which to offer their humble and acceptable sacrifice. They wanted no ecclesiastical architecture, no cathedral pomp of pillars and fretted vault to impress them with religious awe. The broad, all-brilliant arch of heaven was their chosen temple, and the soft gush of bird-song was music more grateful to their taste than the chanted vespers of an ignorant and idolatrous service. God had kindly sheltered their little bark, as it plowed its feeble way onward through waters, which scarcely before had bathed with foam the prow of an emigrant ship. Like a lone bird, weary and wounded with its fierce battle with the storm, that bark, deeply freighted with the fathers and mothers of a great nation, folded its sails upon a new and inhospitable coast. We see this tempest-worn ship lying there, so desolate upon the dreary shore; a few Indian fires sent up their dismal smoke in the dense forest; a few wigwams lay buried in the snows of that ever-to-be-remembered winter, but the smoke of savage fires, and the roof that sheltered savage life, afforded no hospitality to them. Years passed on-the wilderness is subdued-the bleak coast, where the sea-gull hovered in loneliness, is whitened by the sails of a thousand ships-the barren hills of New England are changed into fertile fields. But beyond this, to the westward, was one vast wilderness, "one boundless contiguity of shade." Nature, in all her rugged wildness and beauty was there, but the music of her winds, moaning through the tall forest trees, and the thunder of her booming cataracts were unheard by the ear of civilized man. Her treasures of mineral wealth, no diviner's rod had yet discovered; her exhaustless granite lay piled up the mountain sides, as now; her rivers flowed in the same channels, they have deepened for centuries, and with the same grandeur plowed their way to the ocean; her immense inland seas spread their mirrored surface to the bright sunshine, or tossed their waves to the stormy winds and tempests; her cataracts, which now attract the admiring gaze of travelers from every distant land, raised their eternal anthem, filling the poor Indian, as he drew near with mysterious awe, lifting his thoughts up from nature to nature's God, whose glory appeared in the gorgeous rainbow which overarched the stream, whose voice was heard in the loud thunder of the falling waters, and whose resistless power was symbolized in the rushing flood, and in the hushed billows of the dark abyss. Where now wave the golden harvest-fields awaiting the sickle of the reaper, or rise the beautiful village and the crowded city, resonant with the cheerful hum of business, there stood in thick array and silent grandeur the mountain pine and the tall oaks of the forest, and there trod, in his native pride and freedom, like a lord of creation, the dusky warrior, the stoic of the wood, the man without a tear. Our far-reaching rivers, which once were navigated only by the wild man in his bark canoe, now bear upon their bosoms floating palaces, which move like a thing of life, interchanging the intelligence and the commerce of nations. Our western forests and prairies, but a few years since traversed only by the buffalo, the deer and the wild panther, flying before the deadly arrow of the red man, are now brought under a vigorous culture; the voice of melody and of praise has succeeded to the startling battle-cry of savage men. Surely the wilderness has been converted into a fruitful field, and the desert has been made to rejoice and "blossom as the rose." "Look now abroad-another race has filled These populous borders--wide the wood recedes, Where once was only the wild war-path or the Indian trail, are canals and railroads, bringing the most distant points of our country into almost immediate contact; annihilating time and space; removing local prejudices and dissensions, linking different and distant parts of this Union into one grand and glorious confede racy. Our city, which a hundred years since numbered a population only of a few thousand, now contains its hundreds of thousands, and is rapidly taking a stand among the first cities on the globe. Our fortifications, which once excited the scorn and ridicule of our enemies, have more than once humbled the scoffer, and now bid defiance to the world. Our army, in case of invasion or extraordinary emergency, though called from the work-shop and the harvest-field, are bold, formidable, and have been always victo"A little one has indeed become a thousand, and a small rious. one a strong nation." Within comparatively a short period, these changes and many more, have been wrought, showing that we have been borne as on eagles' wings, so rapid and unparalleled has been our progress. Subjects of contrast, of admiring, astonishing contrast, multiply as the mind adverts to the past and contemplates the present, causing us to live, as it were, in some fairy region, and to be the subjects of some magic agency, rather than among practical realities, the results of the ingenuity, the industry, the indomitable perseverance of man, guided however by Him, without whose blessing the wisest instrumentalities fail of success. In such a review and comparison of the past with the present, do we find no occasion for gratitude to Him, who has emphatically been the God and the guardian of this nation, who has borne us as on eagles' wings? Surely, in such a review, we must be assured that, "Ours is a land, of every land the pride Of Heaven, o'er all the world beside." II. Let us, in the second place, contrast the past and present aspects of our country in a political point of view. We need not detail the circumstances of cruelty and oppression, which compelled the Puritans of England, and the Huguenots of France, to seek a refuge and a home on this Western continent. Brave, heroic, and strong in faith, committing themselves to the protection of Divine Providence, they came to lay the foundations of a new and mighty empire. In all their ways, they acknowledged God and recognized the rights of man. Religious freedom, or the right to worship God according to the dictates of an enlightened conscience, was their great and sacred motto. Religion, untrammelled by law, uncoerced by government, was the religion which they sought and were determined to enjoy. It was their high purpose to govern men by the fear of the Lord; to exhibit the precepts, apply the motives, and realize the dispositions which the Word of God inculcates and his Spirit inspires-to imbue their children, their families, and their civil polity with the wisdom which cometh from above. They had no projects of human device, no theories of untried efficacy. They hung all their hopes of civil and religious prosperity upon the Word of God and the power of his Spirit. Nor was theirs the presumptuous hope of grace without works. It was by training men for self-govern ment; it was by the diffusion of light and the spread of truth, by intellectual culture and moral influence, that they expected to enjoy and perpetuate civil liberty. "Untamed To the refining subtleties of slaves, They brought an happy government along; Formed by that freedom, which, with secret voice, But just as they were beginning to taste the sweets of religious freedom, a threatening storm-cloud appeared. The political horizon became dark, and a heavy thunder-bolt seemed ready to fall upon their cherished and early hopes. But they were neither intimidated nor disheartened. They had been trained to meet disaster and trial. They had been educated in a school well calculated to develop the heroic, the lofty, the unbending in man. The King of England determined that the colonies should share the pecuniary burdens accumulated by the wars prosecuted during the reign of his predecessors. They resisted on the ground that the mother country had no right to tax them without their consent. They had come to this country without asking the protection of the British crown. No armed soldiery had been solicited, or sent to guard them from the attacks of savage foe. They had fought their own battles; hewed down their own forests, planted their institutions, and were struggling on to greatness, without the aid or co-operation of England. They were willing to contribute a reasonable share of means for the relief of the burdens of the mother country, but they insisted on doing it by a vote of their own legislative assemblies, in which they were fairly represented, and they appealed to the justice of the King and his Cabinet to listen to and grant their request. Their appeal was answered, only by indignity, and by an oppressive enforcement of the ob noxious enactments. The tax, in itself, was not great, but it was the principle which they were determined to resist. And they did resist by the force of arms, until British pride was humbled, and our independence recognized, and we took a stand, as a free people, among the nations of the earth. The prominent actors in that drama were high-minded, moral, and religious men, governed by the purest patriotism and love of liberty, whose principles were admired, even by those who condemned and opposed their acts. Seldom, if ever, has the world seen an assemblage of precisely such men. They were statesmen, as if by intuition, with minds of the highest order-intelligent, sagacious, determined in purpose, cool in action, eminently wise in counsel, brave, skillful, and undaunted in the field. It would seem as if God had raised them up purposely for the exigency, and endowed them with high qualifications for the difficult and momentous work they achieved. They were borne through the stormy scenes of the revolution, as on the wings of Divine Providence, and the same wing brooded over their counsels, when they devised and adopted our national |