be a jest) were nauseously obtruded on the company. All the modest part were offended and grieved, while the other besotted creatures laughed aloud, though the leprosy of uncleanness appeared on their lips!-Are not these persons prisoners of darkness, though blazing sconces pour artificial day through their rooms? Are not their souls immured in the most baleful shades, though the noontide sun is brightened by flaming on their gilded chariots?-They discern not that great and adorable Being, who fills the universe with his infinite and glorious presence; who is all eye, to observe their actions; all ear, to examine their words. They know not the all-sufficient Redeemer, nor the unspeakable blessedness of his heavenly king. dom. They are groping for the prize of happiness, but will certainly grasp the thorn of anxiety. They are wantonly sporting on the brink of a precipice, and are every moment in danger of falling headlong into irretrievable ruin and endless despair. They have forced me out, and are, perhaps, deriding me in my absence; are charging my reverence for the ever-present God, and my concern for the dignity of our rational nature, to the account of humour and singularity, to nar rowness of thought, or sourness of temper.--Be it so; I will indulge no indignation against them. If any thing like it should arise I will convert it into prayer."Pity them, O thou Father of "mercies! shew them the madness of their pro "faneness; shew them the baseness of their vile "ribaldry; let their dissolute rant be turned into "silent sorrow and confusion; till they open their "lips to adore thine insulted Majesty, and to "implore thy gracious pardon: till they devote "to thy service those social hours, and those su "perior faculties, which they are now abusing"to the dishonour of thy name-to the contami"nation of their own souls--and (unless timely repentance intervene) to their everlasting in"famy and perdition." I ride home amidst the gloomy void. All dark. ling and solitary, I can scarce discern my horse's head, and only guess out my blind road. No companion but danger; or, perhaps, "destruction "ready at my side."-But why do I fancy myself solitary? is not the Father of lights, the God of my life, the great and everlasting friend, always at my right-hand? Because the day is excluded is his omnipresence vacated? Though I have no earthly acquaintance near, to assist in case of a misfortune; or to beguile the time, and divert uneasy suspicions, by entertaining conferences; may I not lay my help upon the Almighty, and converse with God by humble supplication? For this exercise no place is improper, no hour unseasonable, and no posture incommodious. This is society, the best of society, even in solitude: this is a fund of delights, easily portable, and quite inexhaustible. A treasure this, of unknown value; liable to no hazard from wrong or robbery, but perfectly secure to the lonely wanderer in the most darksome paths. And why should I distress myself with apprehensions of peril? This access to God is not only an indefeasible privilege, but a kind of ambulatory garrison. Those who make known their requests unto God, and rely upon his protecting care; he gives his angels charge over their welfare. His angels are commissioned to escort them in their travelling, and to hold up their goings, that they dash not their foot against a stonet. Nay, He himself condescends to be their guardian, and "keeps all their bones, so that not one of them "is broken."-Between these persons and the most mischievous objects a treaty of peace is concluded. The articles of this grand alliance are re # Job xviii. 12. + Psal. xci, 11, 19. corded in the book of Revelation; and will, when it is for the real benefit of believers, assuredly be made good in the administrations of Providence. In that day, saith the Lord, will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground; and they shall be in league with the stones of the field. Though they fall headlong on the flints; even the flints, fitted to fracture the skull, shall receive them as into the arms of friendship, and not offer to hurt whom the Lord is pleased to preserve. May I then enjoy the presence of this gracious God, and darkness and light shall be both alike. Let Him whisper peace to my conscience, and this dread silence shall be more charming than the voice of eloquence, or the strains of music. Let Him reveal his ravishing perfections in my soul, and I shall not want the saffron beauties of the morn, the golden glories of noon, or the impurpled evening sky. I shall sigh only for those most desirable and distinguished realms, where the light of His countenance perpetually shines, and consequently" there is no night there." How surprising are the alterations of nature! I left her, the preceding evening, plain and unadorned. But now a thick rime has shed its hoary honours over alt. It has shagged the fleeces of " the sheep, and crisped the traveller's locks. The hedges are richly fringed, and all the ground is profusely powdered. The downward branches are tasseled with silver, and the upright are feathered with the plumy wave. The fine are not always the valuable. The air, amidst all these gaudy decorations, is charged with chilling and unwholesome damps. The raw hazy influence spreads wide, sits deep, hangs heavy and oppressive on the springs of life. A + Rev. xxi. 95. Job Y. 23. Hos, il, 18. listless languor clogs the animal functions, and the purple stream glides but faintly through its channels. In vain the ruler of the day exerts his beaming, power; in vain he attempts to disperse this insurrection of vapours. The sullen, malignant cloud refuses to depart; it envelops the world, and intercepts the prospect. I look abroad for the neighbouring village, I send my eye in quest of the rising turret, but am scarce able to discern the very next house. Where are the blue arches of Heaven? where is the radiant countenance of the sun? where the boundless scenes of creation? Lost; lost are their beauties, quenched their glories. The thronged theatre of the universe seems an empty void, and all its elegant pictures an undistinguished blank. Thus would it have been with our intellectual views, if the gospel had not come in to our relief: we should have known neither our true good, nor real evil we had been a riddle to ourselves, the present state all confusion, and the future impenetrable darkness. But the sun of righteousness, arising with potent and triumphant beams, has dissipated the interposing cloud; has opened a prospect more beautiful than the blossoms of spring, more cheering than the treasures of au tumn, and far more enlarged than the extent of the visible system: which, having led the eye of the mind through fields of grace, over rivers of righteousness, and hills crowned with knowledge, terminates, at length, in the heavens; sweetly losing itself in regions of infinite bliss and endless glory. As I walk along the fog, it seems, at some little distance, to be almost solid gloom; such as would shut out every glimpse of light, and totally imprison me in obscurity. But, when I approach, and enter it, I find myself agreeably mistaken, and the mist much thinner than it appeared.Such is the case with regard to the sufferings of the present life; they are not, when experienced, so dreadful as a timorous imagination surmised. Such also is the case with reference to the grati fications of sense; they prove not, when enjoyed, so substantial as a sanguine expectation represented. In both instances we are graciously disappointed. The keen edge of the calamity is blunted, that it may not wound us with incurable anguish: the exquisite relish of the prosperity is palled, that it may not captivate our affections, and enslave them to inferior delights. Sometimes the face of things wears a more pleasing form, the very reverse of the foregoing. The sober evening advances, to close the shortlived day. The firmament, clear and unsullied, puts on its brightest blue. The stars, in thronging multitudes, and with a peculiar brilliancy, glitter through the fair expanse; while the frost pours its subtle and penetrating influence all around. Sharp and intensely severe, all the long night, the rigid æther continues its operations. When, late and slow, the morning opens her pale eye, in what a curious and amusing disguise is nature dressed! The icicles, jagged and uneven, are pendent on the houses. A whitish film incrusts the windows, where mimic landscapes rise, and fancied figures swell. The fruitful fields are hardened to iron, the moistened meadows are congealed to marble; and both resound (an effect unknown before) with the peasant's hasty tread. The stream is arrested in its career, and its ever-flowing surface chained to the banks. The fluid paths become a solid road, where the finny shoals were wont to rove, the sportive youth slide, or the rattling chariots roll. And (what would seem, to an inhabitant of the southern world as unaccountable as the Undague jam tergo ferratos sustinet orbes, Virg. |