which she afterwards vomits to scorch the vegetation up which else would beautify her woody and verdant sides--so these wretched men will aye conceive within their soul malicious, fiendish imaginations and purposes, which being brought forth will destroy all the good which else might flourish in their clime. Who knows but there may be evidences, even there, of a good God,—incitements to meditation upon all the better alternatives of being, which, by reason of abounding wickedness, are frustrated, and the people tantalized with the sight and thought of good, which their own crazed and disjointed frames did aye hinder them from realizing.

When I see the wretchedness created within the breast of man by the simple excess or overstrained action of any power, however good; how benevolence being in excess will drive man into Quixotic madness, and make him a world's sport; how malice will drive him into misanthropic madness, and much learning will make him mad; how sensibility will make him a melancholic, helpless creature; and disappointed love make him wander under the pale moon, till he catches her lunatic influences; how the amor sceleratus habendi,' or hell-fire greed,' (if I may be permitted a Scottish version)

I will waste a man like a shadow, and eat the flesh off his bones though he have a royal dowry in his coffer.-Oh! when I think how near every man yerges upon the confines of madness and misery, and how the least shift in the fabric of our minds

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would send heavenly reason into howling madness-I fancy that I see a thousand powers resident in God, by the smallest expense of means, to make a hell such as no earthly science or earthly language is able to represent.

PART VIII.

ACTS XVII. 30, 31. GOD COMMANDETH ALL MEN EVERY WHERE TO

REPENT : BECAUSE HE HATH APPOINTED A DAY, IN THE WHICH HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD IN RIGHTEOUSNESS.

THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE CONDEMNATION AND

WRATH TO COME.

From these awful scenes which we have been faintly sketching out, (for in their fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow it is not given to man either to know or to describe them.) we return to visible things; and, planting ourselves upon the populous earth, we could wish to lift up a voice like the last trumpet in the ears of men : How are you to escape this condemnation and wrath to come? But, alas! there is no voice like the last trumpet, to reach the ear of perishing men; and unless the Lord hasten to pour his Spirit upon all fesh, the abject people will die ignorant of salvation, and for ever perish from the way of everlasting peace. Do Thou, who gavest thy Son for sinful men, now quicken my thoughts, that they may issue full of divine life, to plant their likeness in every bosom to which these pages may come! This, truly, is my prayer. But were my God pleased to grant me this, how little doth it avail among the myriads in this world among the myriads in this empire-among the myriads even in this city, who

are perishing under the mortal disease of sinful. ness, that hath spread into the heart of every cottage, and is fast hauling its unvisited and unpitied , inmates to habitations of misery. There is an establishment of physicians to make known the remedy unto the people, and there are houses open where the remedy is made known. But, alas! the people know not of the soul-consuming malady, and having none to tell them, they come not to be cured; while in their darkness Satan reveleth, wasting them with lust, pride and quarrel. The miserable people have no chance of being delivered, unless the Lord will awaken his congregation and send them forth on errands of salvation. Oh, for the spirit of a Paul, to lead the congregation forth upon this errantry of good; and the spirit of a Loyola, to bind them in a harmony of exertion; and the spirit of a Luther, to make them fearless of infringing established things:—that a reformation might come about, which would not need to be reformed! But, I think Religion hath learned to make men tame and cowardly, whom anciently she made undaunted. The men of God hardly speak above their breath, who were wont to ring doom and woe into every impeding minister of evil. They creep about under the colossal limbs of power, and cry mercy instead of denouncing vengeance. It is an age in which the ancient spirit is well nigh extinct; but it will revive again in this land, which hath been famous for the junction of manhood with religion; when to the piety and the

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humility of the church, will be added her ancient fearlessness and heroism and activity. And the offence of the offending will be feared no longer ; and Christian spirit will resume its boldness, and Christian sight its watchfulness; and every priest will be a watchman in Zion, and every Christian a soldier round its walls.

It dispirits me while I undertake to write, to think how much better these subjects have been witten before, and how darkness triumphs over all the light which hath been spread abroad. No sooner doth a book with any nerve appear, which

, might make invasion upon Satan's reign, than he covers it with the disparagement of some hated name, calling it enthusiastical, gloomy, or ascetic, and so keeps it from those places where the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, have their strongest holds. Or he raiseth up some strong-minded, light-witted scoffer, to argue or laugh it down, whereof he hath establishments-scholars, wits, and critics--who hate the very visage of a genuine disciple of Christ, and are aye ready to asperse any book which is marked with the sign of the Cross, and send it into the arcana of oblivion. And, oh! the natural man loveth any thing better than to hear of his new birth and regeneration, and will take up with a pleasant song or idle tale sooner than he will with the institutes of his own salvation. And, alas! there are multitudes who cannot read what is written, and come not to hear what may be spoken; so that it dispirits me while I write, to