life;" but there is but one gate, and one way, through which every living soul must rise to heaven-if to heaven he rise at all-and that is through faith in Jesus Christ, and through that holiness which follows that faith, if that faith is genuine. Let all ranks, then, from the highest to the lowest, learn this precious truth from the Book of God. Believe in Christ, and believe in him with the heart unto righteousness. This is the effectual way to be taken by every individual who wishes to obtain the diminution of the divine judgment now ravaging our land, by every individual who wishes to obtain for himself a ground of peace in the prospect of that death which its approach may bring to him, but which, at all events, must soon come to him. Let it be the business of all men to consider what faith is, to beseecn tne grace of God to bestow it, and to enao.e them to follow after holiness, without whicn they can never please nor see God. My brethren, these are the means, the cherishings and actings of faith; these are the means by which you may make your selves, as I have said, instruments of good to the public, and by which you may make yourselves ready for the hour in which the Son of Man shall come. Now, surely, any long detail or remark is unnecessary to convince you, that for the hour of the Son of Man coming, the most important duty which a mortal has to discharge, is in the command to make himself ready. O, my brethren, how delightful will it be to you, how delightful will it be to the friends that may surround your dying couch, if you shall be one of those sainted men who, having been tried with tribulation, tried to the end of your earthly career by the world and seduction, shall be ready, at the call of your God, to resign its enjoyments; and, standing on the verge of eternity, shall be solaced with a conscience void of offence, when reflecting on the past, and refreshed with the prospect of an everlasting kingdom in the heavens? The ministers of religion are called to furnish consolation to the dying, and they see them in various conditions of character and feeling. But they will tell you that eye cannot behold a more sublime, or more instructing, or edifying spectacle, than the deathbed of a good man, full of humble confidence in God, rejoicing in the approbation of his own heart, triumphing over the fears of the grave, and singing, when he thinks himself standing on its very verge, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but to all them also that love his appearing." My dear friends, if this dignified termination of our earthly trials be an object we desire to gain; if the state of our souls at death shall decide our eternal fate; if the hour of our departure from time shall be the hour of our passage to happiness or misery everlasting, I put it to your understanding, if you will reflect, how carefully, how intensely, how incessantly, we should prepare for its approach. Because we do not see it, we are apt to flatter ourselves that it is far distant. But need I tell you, my mortal brethren, that you were born to die? If, at this solemn moment, a heavenly messenger should descend from the sky, and announce the time of your departure, as to an ancient was done : thy sickness shall be unto death; this week shall be thy last week on earth; even this night thy soul shall be required of thee, who among you would be ready for this message of terror? Alas! what tears of affliction would run down our checks at the remembrance of our sins; what prayers we would give for a short prolongation of our trials; what thoughts would we have of those we left behind; what solicitude would be felt to finish our work of sanctification! But is an angel from heaven necessary to tell us that we are mortal, that our appointed days are few? As for the days that are gone, and the ages that are past, what has become of the multitude that filled them? Let us look around in quest of those in our own time; let us look around us in quest of those whom but a few moments we saw with delight on the stage of life, the companions of our youth, the friends of our bosom, the children perhaps whom nature designed to be props of our declining years, whither have they gone? A voice from their grave pierces the heart of the thinking soul, and calls on us all to be ready to follow them. Listen, then, to this warning voice. It accords with the dictates of universal experience; every change in our condition reminds us of its truth; infirmities as they draw upon us, tell that the hour of our departure cometh. In this, the day of a merciful visitation, in this our present escape from the dread-ready. No painful retrospect will disquiet ful malady, let us attend to the things that our consciences, no anxious forebodings belong to our peace; let us cherish the terrify our souls. If we lead the life of dispositions, and hopes, and habits, the the righteous, we shall die their death; remembrance of which may cheer our we shall depart like them, and be with departed spirits; let us learn lessons of them, and our work shall follow us unto righteousness from the judgments of God; | the habitation of our heavenly Father. let us lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, and then when our Lord comes, whether he come in the first watch or in the second, whether this day or to-morrow, whether in the hour of our worship or in the hour of business, whether when we are asleep or awake, he will find us I only add, and let all join in the prayer: Do thou, O God, to whom belong the issues of life, do thou stand by us in our dying moments, support our feeble limbs in their passage through the dark valley, and receive them into their everlasting rest, for Christ's sake. Amen. ON THE AGENCY OF GOD IN HUMAN CALAMITIES; A SERMON PREACHED IN GEORGE-STREET CHAPEL, GLASGOW, ON THURSDAY, 22d MARCH, 1832, BEING THE DAY OF THE NATIONAL FAST. By the Rev. RALPH WARDLAW, D.D. "Shall there be evil in a city, and the I NEED hardly say, that it is not moral evil that is here meant. It is not sin, but suffering. It is not the commission of iniquity, but the pressure of distress. From Micah vi. 9, The Lord's voice crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom shall see thy name: hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it." I not long ago called your attention to the lights in which that Prophet taught Israel, and teaches us, to regard temporal calamities: namely, as the warning voice of God, as a manifestation of the name or character of God, and as a corrective expression of the displeasure of God; along with the grounds on which it is our wisdom and our duty so to regard them. The words now read from Amos are part of a similar appeal. By him, as well as by Micah, the Lord maintains his controversy with Israel. By which of the prophets, indeed, did he not maintain it? At what period of their history did they not give occasion, by their conduct, for expostulation, reproof, and warning? (Jer. xxv. 4-7.) In the passage of which our text is a part, Jehovah pleads on the ground of his peculiar dealings with Israel, by which he had so highly distinguished them from other nations in honour, and in privilege, and in substantial blessing: verses 1, 2, "Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought Lord hath not done it ?"-Amos iii. 6. up from the land of Egypt, saying, You "Can You "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid ?" can imagine no, you hardly can, what the effect would be, if, in a city like our own, there were suddenly heard "the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war," the announcement of an approaching enemy. What throbbing of heart! what violent excitement! what silent dread! what noisy terror! what bustle and confusion! what looking one upon another! what anxious questioning! what running together, for information, for the mutual expression of hopes and fears, of wishes and alarms, of animation and discouragement, of sources of danger and means of safety! Now, when the voice of the Lord cried unto the city, the cause for alarm was as real, and far greater, than at the sounding of the trumpet of battle. This is the sentiment expressed in verses 7, 8. "The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" A truly benevolent spirit feels it a most painful restraint, to keep back either the warning of evil, or the tidings of good. This was one at least of the impelling motives in the bosom of the Apostles, when they said, "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard ;" and in the bosom of Jeremiah, when, having been subjected to the persecuting violence of his enemies, and having found all his warnings so unavailing, he formed the resolution of shunning farther suffering by silence: "I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in his name: but his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. (Jer. xx. 8, 9.) There is a natural atheism in the human heart, a constantly prevailing tendency to forget God. This tendency (alas! for our nature!) is more powerful amidst the abundance of the enjoyments of life, than under the pressure of its calamities. So true is this, that adversity has many a time been made use of as a means for counterworking the pernicious influence of prosperity, the former bringing back the heart which the latter had led astray. How rare is the case of a sinner brought to repentance and serious religion by prosperity and success in life! But the instances have not been few, of persons "chosen in the furnace of affliction," subdued and reclaimed by adversity. We dare not say, however, that this is the natural effect of divine judgments operating on human corruption. They tend rather to fret, and provoke, and alienate. And there is, moreover, a sad propensity to overlook the hand of God in them altogether; so that men stand always in need of having it pointed out to them, and pressed upon their observation. It is to the solemn truth of the divine appointment of calamities, that the attention is called, and called impressively, by the question in the text: "Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?" We shall consider the Lord's agency in the infliction of evil, in contradistinction to three things-to CHANCE, to IDOLS, and to SECOND CAUSES. This is a supplementary topic to those discussed on the former text, from the prophecies of Micah; and I wish to be understood, although without any very pointed mention of them, as having reference to the distresses of our own times, and country, and city. I. We distinguish the agency of Jehovah from CHANCE. Chance is a word very common in the mouths of many; but it is a word, of the meaning of which very few of those who use it have ever set themselves to form any definite notion. The truth is, chance is nothing. It is a mere term of human ignorance. When we say that an event has happened by chance, we seldom think at all what we mean. we intend to say that it has had no cause, that is atheism. It is the exclusion of all superintending agency. But the only rational meaning of the word (if a rational meaning it can be said to have) is, that we are in ignorance of the cause or causes of the event. The poet speaks truly, when he defines chance in these terms: "All chance-direction, which we cannot see," If There is an atheism, directly and properly so called, which denies the existence of a God altogether. There is an atheism which admits existence, but excludes all superintendence of human or created beings, and of their respective concerns. Such, of old, was the atheism of Epicurus and his followers; which, however, had so far the merit of consistency, that it associated the denial of Providence with the denial of proper creation. And similar, though diversified in some particulars, have been the godless system of some moderns. But certainly we might as well have no God, as a God that takes no interest in his creatures, and exercises no superintendence over them. We might as well have no God as no Providence. The sentiment of the text is the exact reverse of this: that there is a God, and that he directs and governs all things. The sentiment is not to be confined to our own world. It extends to all worlds. In all parts of the unmeasured creation, He is "ever present, ever felt!" This is the uniform affirmation, and the pervading principle of the Bible. It runs through all its contents, with an application such as the most heedless reader can hardly overlook. Its maxim is," All things are there be evil in a city," evil which affects the condition, whether temporal or spiritual, of intelligent and immortal beings, of beings who are susceptible, not merely of physical suffering, but of all the pains that arise from the tender sensibilities of social life, the sweet and powerful "charities of father, son, and brother," from which it is, in times of public calamity, that the most exquisite distresses arise? What I wish, then, first of all, to impress on the minds of my hearers, and on my own, is, that in the heavy gloom that hangs over our city, in the variety and accumulation of personal and domestic, bodily and mental suffering that is endured, whether occasioned by the state of trade or the state of health, it is "no chance that has come upon us." It is the hand of the allseeing and all-disposing Ruler of the Universe that is laid upon us, and laid upon us in a merited and righteous judgment." of God." At every turn of its historical | may say, in terms of the text, If "withdetails we meet his eye, we discern his out our heavenly Father a sparrow falleth hand. No such thing as chance is ad- not to the ground," how then "shall mitted by its writers, in even the smallest matters. It is much more consistent with itself than the systems of some philosophical speculators, who would grant a providence in great, but question it in little things; forgetting, first, that the true majesty of God consists in the unembarrassed universality of his superintendence, in its embracing, without confusion, and without an effort of thought, all the endless complication of events, and all the immense variety of being; and forgetting, secondly, how intimately and inseparably great events and small are involved and linked together, so that the continuity of the chain depends as much upon the least of the links as upon the greatest, the working and efficiency of the complicated machinery, and the evolution of the designed results, upon the minutest wheels as upon the largest, and most prominent and imposing. The machinist, when he looks at the great wheels, is well aware, although his eye does not penetrate to them, any more than that of the novice, on what little, secret, and seemingly trivial movements the effective revolutions of these depend; so that, were a single pin taken out, or the smallest wheel in the unseen interior shifted or broken, all might be impeded or brought to a stand. Thus it is in the intricate movements of Divine Providence; as we might show you by ten thousand striking exemplifications, of which not a few, and the most satisfactory of all, occur in the inspired history. In what strong and delightful terms is the doctrine of a universal and particular providence expressed by Him who "spake as never man spake!" "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. (Matt. x. 29-31.) There is hardly any thing we can imagine less in apparent magnitude, in itself or in its consequences, than the death of a sparrow: and, in the words I have just quoted, the inference is drawn from the less to the greater, in a form, and with an emphasis, most encouraging and cheering to all the intelligent creatures of God, and especially to all his redeemed children. On the principle of inferential reasoning, we II. We consider the Prophet as distinguishing the agency of Jehovah from that of IDOLS. I have said, that there is a natural atheism in the human heart. This is a position which some may be inclined to dispute, as not only painfully degrading to our nature, but contrary to fact. Where, it will be asked, do we find men without some form or other of religion? And if religion, in some form or other, is every where to be found, it must certainly be natural to man. Nor am I disposed, taking the term in a vague amplitude of accepta tion, to dispute the truth of this; though it may be remarked in general, that it is not easy to separate, in such matters, between what may be the suggestions of nature, and what the corrupted remnants of an early tradition. Suppose it true. The religion to which men are thus naturally disposed, we dare not, without impiety, admit to be worthy of the name: it is only one of the many forms of irreligion. The truth seems to be, that there is a tendency to two opposite extremes, both equally at a distance from truth and rectitude, the extremes of atheism and superstition. Superstition is the offspring of guilty fears; and the general character of the gods of the Heathen, in many cases indicated by their very forms, accords with the nature of their origin. Superstition ascribes every thing to some dreaded supernatural agent or other, every calami tous or unpropitious incident to some malignant power of evil. But polytheistic superstition, though admitting what it calls by the name of deity, "gods many, and lords many," is represented in the Scriptures as only one of the forms of atheism. Of the religion to which human nature has all along shown its proneness, there was an abundant profusion amongst those who "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and who worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator:" and yet of them it is said, "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge." But if they did not retain God in their knowledge, they were in reality atheists. That surely is not religion, of whose feelings and acts of homage the objects are either nonentities, or possess a being whose qualities are as opposite to those of Deity as darkness is to light :and atheists their worshippers are accordingly denominated: "Not knowing God, they did service to them which by nature are no gods," (Gal. iv. 8):-they were "without God" (atheists) "in the world," (Eph. ii. 12.) : or their common calamities; that it was Jehovah, the God of Israel, the only God. On the ground of their utter impotence, their incapacity to do good or to do evil to their votaries, to save or to destroy, the heathen deities are not unfrequently, in terms of sarcastic irony and of a kind of sublime derision, challenged by the prophets, in the name of Jehovah, to comparison and competition. (Isa. xli. 21—24. Jer. x. 3—16.) This But we, my hearers, may be ready to say, we are very little in danger from this source of error-the error of acknowledging other gods-the fantastic or detestable absurdities of heathen mythology. is not, you think, (and you think truly,) one of your temptations. And I will not at present urge upon you the various possibilities of idolatry, without your falling down to stocks and stones, or prostrating yourselves to the lights of heaven. Neither will I press upon you how the world, in all its forms of ambition, and avarice, and pleasure, may take away your hearts from God, and become the idol of your unfeigned and undivided devotion. I will not demand your attention to the proposition, true as it is, that whatever occupies that place in Again while the religion to which your affections and desires, which God human nature has ever been prone is in himself ought legitimately to hold, is your truth irreligion and atheism, there has dis- idol; although the Scripture unequivocally covered itself, wherever the knowledge of justifies and sanctions the proposition, by the true God has been imparted, a mourn-pronouncing covetousness idolatry, and the fully consistent propensity to forget Him, to overlook his superintendence, to leave him out of our thoughts. Thus it was with the Jews. They required to be incessantly reminded of God. They were ever perversely and infatuatedly prone to the superstitious extreme, to let slip the remembrance of their own Jehovah, and to substitute for Him the gods of the surrounding heathen, imputing events to their agency rather than to that of the God of Israel. The text was meant, like many others, to remind them that Jehovah reigned; that Jehovah was the author alike of their calamities and their blessings; that the latter were his unmerited favours, the former his deserved corrections; that to HIM they were to cultivate gratitude; that to HIM they were to exercise submission: that it was not Baal; it was not Moloch; it was not Melcom, or Ashtaroth, or Dagon, or the Queen of Heaven, or any other of those senseless idols, which they had multiplied to themselves "according to the number of their cities," that brought upon those cities, at any time, their respective covetous man an idolater, and affirming, III. Divine agency may be regarded in contradistinction to an exclusive attention to SECOND CAUSES. How frequently is something called NATURE, (a name which, though sometimes used for the God of nature, expresses, not seldom, a kind of mystical personification of some unknown existence, the employment of the term hardly, if at all, suggesting any thought of God,) how frequently is something called Nature, in language and in thought, in a manner deified! And not less frequently, second or subordinate causes are so contemplated and insisted on, as to indicate an exclusion from the mind of the great originating Cause of all being, and the supreme uncontrolled Director of all events! In accourt |