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people of 80, and girls of 16; fathers and mothers; sisters and brothers; husbands, wives, and children, died covered with the blood of each other.

"The people hearing of nothing but conspiracies, invasion, and treason, were afraid of their own friends; and, fancying themselves upon a mine which was ready to explode beneath them, sunk into such a state of torpid terror, that a man, if asked for his life, resigned it without regret. At the same time, all the churches, were shut, their ministers sacrificed, and the ancient worship forbidden under pain of death."*

The Rev. David Simpson justly observes :-In France, Voltaire† sneered at and ridiculed the Bible

*Barruel says, that upwards of 130 bishops and archbishops, and 64,000 curates and vicars, were driven from their sees and parishes. All the clergy, and the religious of both sexes, were deprived of the church patrimony, and forced from their retreats; in one city 300 priests were massacred in one day; and all who remained faithful were slaughtered or banished. Of this establishment some general data are before us: 18 archbishoprics; 118 bishoprics; 34,498 parishes, and 4,644 annexed parishes; and a regular and secular clergy of about 366,264. Thus in detail: 136 archbishops and bishops; 11,850 canons; 14,000 singers of the choirs; 4,000 children of the choirs; 10,000 chaplain friars; 44,000 curates, priors'-curates, &c.; 50,000 secondary vicars; 60,000 ecclesiastics in colleges and seminaries; 280 order of Malta; 35,500 religious of chief orders of abbeys and priories; 46,500 religious mendicants; and 80,000 nuns.

+The vanity and heartlessness of man were never more plainly evinced than by Voltaire, in a letter dated April 2, 1764:-"Whatever I behold is sewing the seeds of a revolu

for sixty or seventy years; and, with the help of inferior instruments, has brought the people to such a state, that many of them have given up their God and their Saviour; their Bible and their Religion; their Sabbath and their souls. All this has been accomplished in France, and what is the consequence ? The Almighty having given them up to their own infatuation, they have been murdering one another, in every part of the nation, by thousands. While they had a God, they dishonoured Him. While they had a Saviour, they treated Him contemptuously. Their Bible they slighted; their Religion they corrupted;

tion; which will INFALLIBLY ARRIVE, but which I shall not have the PLEASURE TO WITNESS. The French arrive at every thing by slow degrees, but at length they do arrive. Light is so much spread abroad among them by gradual approaches, that, on the first occasion they will break out, and then there will be a FINE TUMULT. Young people are fortunate, for they will see CHARMING THINGS."

Now the deliberation and forethought so obvious in the first sentence, were not the characteristics of Voltaire; but the levity of the man manifests itself in "the pleasure to witness" "a fine tumult," which will "fortunately display “charming things." The truth is, the ridiculous temerity is Voltaire's; the scrutiny of events and inference, J. J. Rousseau's, and thus stated in his "Emilius:" "You confide in the actual order of society without reflecting that this order is subject to inevitable revolutions, and that it is impossible for you to foresee or prevent what may happen to your children. The great may become little, the rich poor, the monarch a subject.

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their Sabbath they profaned; and their souls they polluted. And, in righteous judgment, the Moral Governor has now sent them a strong delusion that they should believe nothing, as before they pretended to believe everything!

3. CHASTENING.

"Put them in fear, O Lord."-Ps. ix. 20.

Strange that man, dust in his original, sinful by his fall, and continually reminded of both by every thing in him and about him, should yet stand in need of some

Are the blows of fate so rare as that you can calculate upon being exempt from them? WE ARE APPROACHING the crisis,

and the AGE OF REVOLUTIONS:

"I hold it to be impossible that the great monarchies of Europe can endure much longer. They have all shone, and every state, which thus distinguishes itself, is on its decline. I have reasons for my opinion, which are still stronger than this maxim, but it is not convenient to avow them, though every one feels them too sensibly."

But the whole scheme was now so far developed, as to be obvious to every judicious enquirer. The Rev. Mr. Fletcher, writing from Macon, in Burgundy, in May, 1778, says: "in these parts, Materialism, is not rare; Deism and Socinianism, are very common; and a set of Free-Thinkers (great admirers of Voltaire and Rousseau, and of Bayle and Mirabeau) seem bent upon destroying Christianity and Government-with one hand they shake the throne, and with the other they throw down the altar."

sharp affliction, some severe visitation from God, to bring him to the knowledge of himself, and make him feel who and what he is. But this is frequently the case; and when it is, as these are wounds which cannot be healed without a previons application of caustics, mercy is necessitated to begin her work with an infliction of judgment.-Bishop Horne.

"The Lord trieth the righteous; but the wicked, and him that loveth violence, his soul hateth."-Ps. xi. 5.

As to the afflictions which

persons may suffer, who are embarked in a righteous cause, they are intended to purge away the dross, and to refine them for the Master's use. "Gold," saith the son of Sirach, "is tried in the fire; and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity."-Ecclus. ii. 5. In the mean time, God's displeasure against the wicked is ever the same; and their prosperity, instead of benefiting, will in the end destroy them. The cases of David and Saul, Christ and the Jews, the Martyrs and their Persecutors, are all cases in point, and should be often in our thoughts, to teach us patience, and guard us against despair, in seasons of calamity, pain, or disgrace.”—Bp. Horne.

"Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee."-Ps. lv. 22.

Amidst all dangers and adversities, whensoever they oppress us, we are to put our

full trust and confidence only in His merey, who

delivered David, and the Son of David, out of all their

troubles. He, who once bore the burden of our sorrows, requested of us, that we would now and ever permit Him to bear the burden of our cares; that as He knoweth what is best for us, He may provide it accordingly. When shall we trust Christ to govern the world which He hath redeemed?-Bishop Horne.

4. MORTALITY.

"My heart is sore pained within me; and the terrors of death are fallen upon me."-Ps. lv. 4.

These words describe the

state of David's mind, when

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he went over the brook Cedron, and up mount Olivet, "weeping as he went (II Samuel xv. 23, 30); they describe the agony of the Son of David, when He likewise went over the same brook Cedron (John xviii. 1), at the time of His passion, when "His soul was very heavy, and exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”—Mark xiv. 33, 34. And every man will too surely find them applicable to himself, if not often before, yet certainly in that day, when the king of terrors shall draw up all his forces in array against him.-Bishop Horne.

me."-Ps. lv. 5.

"Fearfulness and trem- Alas! how desolate the debling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed parting soul, how dismal its forebodings, when the approach of death awakens it from the torpor of indifference, or arrests it in the levity of scepticism! The father, whose pride and unbelief involve a wife and

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