THE WESTERN

SKETCH-BOOK.

INTRODUCTION.

I STOOD On the bank of the Mississippi, and gazed upon the rush of its mighty stream. Wave pressed on wave; and the broad tide, with a force that no earthly power could withstand, swept onward to the ocean. "Great river!" I exclaimed, "hast thou rolled on thus from age to age? Hast thou maintained this majestic march through the lapse of more than fifty centuries? Then what is the history of this immense country on thy borders? What people gazed upon thy stream three thousand years ago? Were there then intellectual beings here, to adore that mighty God who dug thy deep channel, and spread out at thy side these broad, fertile plains, and covered thee with the bright blue heaven?" Such were the questions that arose in my mind; but there was none to answer. I looked back on the past history of the west. But, beyond the period of sixty or seventy years, there sets in a thick, impenetrable darkness-"even darkness which ́may be felt ;" and all is, to us, buried in the gulf of hopeless oblivion. Events that transpired then, however interesting they may have been, are irrecoverably lost: no effort of ours can call them back, or secure for them a record on the pages of memory.

Another question arose: Will the man who stands

where I stand now, a hundred or a thousand years hence, experience the same desire to know the early history of the mighty west, of which I now am conscious? The answer is clear: He will. Then I am resolved to "gather up the fragments," not already lost, of the history of the west, and preserve them,"That ages yet unborn may read,

And trust and praise the Lord.”

But this infant

The west is, as yet, only an infant. possesses the elements of a fearful and stupendous growth. Ere long, the inhabitants of the world will open their eyes, and with astonishment behold a giant standing here. His height will be terrible, and his power such, that earth's foundations will bend beneath his footsteps; and at the lifting of his hand distant nations will tremble.

Yes, the teeming millions of a crowded population will soon spread over this wide and wonderful region. The banks of these long rivers will be studded with "cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces;" and religion, and education, and science, and cultivated society will be here, to an extent that earth has not witnessed in ages that are gone. In that day, the mighty population of the west will eagerly inquire after the early history of their country.

I have determined, therefore, to gather up the facts within the period of my own memory, and arrange them, and dedicate the record to the generations following. A larger work, entitled "The Early Religious History of the West," which the author has for years been preparing, is more particularly referred to, than the mere sketches contained in the present volume.

THE HONEY-BEE.

How strong is the propensity in man to honor the prophet that is dead, while he rejects the prophet that is living! Scribes, Pharisees, and Jewish rulers would build the sepulchres of Samuel, Isaiah, and Zachariah; but when Jesus Christ, the living Prophet, appeared, preaching the same truths, they cried out, "Away with him from the earth! Crucify him! crucify him!"

Men admire and eulogize those very attributes in the dead prophet which they cannot bear in the prophet that is living. Go to any revival-fighting Presbyterian minister in the west or south. He will expatiate with much enthusiasm on the preaching of John Knox, when such multitudes, in one generation, were turned from darkness to light. He will hastily search his library for a printed account of that remarkable sermon of Livingston, in Scotland, on the Monday of a sacramental meeting, under which five hundred souls were converted to God. He will speak, with great interest and earnestness, of the blessed results that followed the preaching of Samuel Davies in Virginia, and James Waddell, afterwards known far and wide as the Blind Preacher mentioned by Wirt in his "British Spy." These preachers and their hearers are gone from earth.

"Their hatred and their love is lost,

Their envy buried in the dust;
They have no share in all that's done

Beneath the circuit of the sun."

But speak to this same man of a revival in the present age. "Ah, there were sad indiscretions!" "animal excitement!" "spasmodic movements!" &c. That is it: build the sepulchre of the prophet that is dead, and scowl at the prophet that is living. Eulogize Elisha and Daniel, but stone Stephen to death, and crucify his Lord and Master.

In like manner, we are ready to acknowledge a providence of God. toward those who are dead and gone, which we are slow to admit in reference to those now living. We can believe that God sent against Pharaoh "swarms of flies," armies of frogs, and legions of locusts. These were judgments from God. His hand was made bare. We see it at once, and confess it without difficulty; for these things took place above three thousand years ago. We can believe that God brought the quails around the camp of the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness, and that he sent hornets before them to drive out the Canaanite, the Hittite, and the Hivite, (Ex. xxiii. 28,) for these things, also, were done in a remote age of the world. But are we willing to believe that there are, at this hour, around the church and around the individual saint, the same careful, constant, almighty guardianship and direction that there were in the days of Moses, of Joseph, and of Abraham? Are we willing to believe that now the sparrow does not fall to the ground without the hand of God? and that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered? To such questions, many will give the practical answer, "No!"

This infidelity concerning the presence and providence of God in our own day, is the crying sin of the present age. The High and Holy One is the same from