rica? Were the streets of Jerusalem more frequently polluted by the unhallowed buyer and seller on that day, than are the streets of our own settlements and villages and cities? Must we not rationally expect "that the soul" of our offended sovereign "will be avenged on such a nation as ours? Is the violation of his law less aggravated among us, whose light is more clear, whose privileges are more exalted, than among them? or is the Lord God less righteous to avenge the quarrel of his covenant? Nay, have not our judgments already commenced?

To consider the evidences of divine wrath which we have occasionally experienced, and under which we now suffer, was the second part of our subject, and demands our attention.

1. Has not a Holy God often plead his controversy with our land by a fearful pestilence? Receiving its commission from on high, has not this scourge gone abroad through our country, and visited in their turn our cities from the northern to the southern extremities of the union? In its hostile career has it not desolated for a season the sanctuaries of God; driven from their abodes thousands of our citizens; and mingled in sudden, promiscuous ruin the babe, the youth, and the hoary head?

As another mark of his indignation, and another mean of reclaiming an ungrateful, apostatizing people, has he not commission

ed the fire to become the avenger of his quarrel? Has not this devouring element laid waste in some degree many of our cities, and reduced from affluence to poverty hundreds of their inhabitants? The messengers of Jehovah's wrath have not been confined to our cities, but have occasionally visited all parts of the country. The insect, an army small, imperceptible, yet irresistible, has marched through the land, and cut down, in its progress, the staff of life. Before it our fields were clothed with verdure, and flourishing "as the garden of Eden, but behind it a desolate wilderness." Did he not in one year "shut up the windows of heaven,' refusing to us "the early and later rain in their season;" and by intemperate rains in another year did he not destroy the fruits of the earth, blast the hopes of the husbandman, and alarm with apprehensions of cleanness of teeth? Such are the scourges which we have occasionally felt in years that are past; such the expressions of divine indignation under which our land has often trembled. Natural causes have been ingeniously assigned for all these calamities: Presumptuous, impious mortals would fondly exclude the living God from all agency in the world, as they extinguish every generous impulse of his fear and love in their own hearts: Every occurrence, whether prosperous or adverse, is ascribed by them to secondary means; but "the man of wisdom" will consider them "as coming forth from VOL. 3. 2 & 2

the Lord of hosts," and as visitations either of his mercy or wrath. "Is there evil in the city; is there evil" in the country, "and the Lord hath not done it?" Does the pestilence consume the persons of our citizens, or the fire devour their property? Does the rain prove our scourge in one year, or the drought in another, or the mildew in another without his permission and appointment? They are alike the ministers of almighty God; they come only at his call, and they continue to fulfil the high commission received from his hand. Thus he declared to Israel formerly, and thus he may declare to America now, "I have withholden the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest: I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: I have sent among you pestilence after the manner of Egypt: I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah."

"For all these his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." Is not our nation trembling at this moment under awful appearances of the divine displeasure? Has not the cloud collected, and spread, and darkened every part of ourhorizon, and is seemingly ready to burst forth in our destruction? Are we not now asseinbled in this sanctuary for the very purpose of deprecating the displeasure of our God; of confessing and mourning over our national guilt as the procuring cause, and to implore his return in loving kindness to our

land? "The anger of the Lord hath divided us" as a people; "he no longer regards us."

Do not a diversity of sentiment and alienation of affection almost universally prevail? Has not mutual confidence departed from our fellow-citizens, and the fell demon of discord succeeded in its room? Is not the brother alienated from his brother; the son from his father; the neighbor from his neighbor; the citizen from the magistrate? Nay, has not mutual confidence departed in some instances from the spiritual pastor and the people of his charge? Is it not a a notorious fact, that if the servants of the cross remain faithful to their trust; if they expose "without partiality and without hypocrisy" the corruptions of men and magistrates, they are immediately slandered inpublic houses and public prints; they are represented as rallying under the standard of party, and as converting their pulpits into political engines. Have not these jealousies, these contentions diffused their deadly influence through every part of the community? Do they not tend to distract the proceedings of every assembly, from the petit-jury up to the highest deliberative council in the nation! Has it not become a matter of course, that a measure proposed by one class of the community, will be opposed and reprobated by the other? Although we are citizens of the same commonwealth, and united by the dearest social connexions; although we have all that is interesting to us in time, our

property, our liberty, our religion, our lives embarked on the same bottom, yet we mark the movements of each other with all the suspicion of the avowed, irreconcileable enemy. This alienation of heart; those bitter revilings I formerly mentioned

our sin; I would now mention them as a most deplorable calamity, and as an evident and awful proof of the Lord's controversy with us. It is an old proverb, uttered by an infallible teacher, that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." When we see a particular family split up into factions; each member torturing the feelings, or crucifying the character, or opposing the interests of the other, we conclude without hesitancy that the Lord has departed from that house, and that its desolation is near. It is not less true of nations than of particular families; unite and you establish; divide and you destroy. When Jehovah denounced the overthrow of Egypt for their contempt of his name, and the cruelties which they had perpetrated upon his people, he declares, "I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians, and they shall fight every man against his brother, and every man against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." May we not therefore consider our internal dissentions and distractions as "coming forth from the Lord of hosts," and as his righteous judgment upon our guilty land? Are we not constrained to deplore in the plaintive language of the