and that now, instead of being secure of a continued prosperity, they should too readily have predicted the immediate downfall of every thing that was dear to them. Such, too, we may, in the second place, remark, is the feeling which our Lord saw would succeed in the minds of his disciples, to their former unreasonable security. He saw that, in the feebleness of despondency, they would become the dupes of imposture, and would construe every " rumour of "war," and even the accidental convulsions of nature themselves, into the signs of their approaching destruction. It is in this view that he endeavours to strengthen their souls against those weakening delusions, by warning them to take heed, lest any man should deceive them ; lest they should be seduced by "false "Christs and false Prophets," or misled by their signs or wonders; and he assures them

"that nation should rise against nation,” and "earthquakes and famines would be "in divers places;" but that these were only "the beginnings of sorrows, and "that the end was not yet."-There cannot be a doubt, my brethren, that a great part of the disasters, which, in our time, have come upon the world, has arisen from the indulgence of that feebleness of spirit, against which our Lord here warns his disciples. When men had lost that presumption, which had no foundation in reason, they gave themselves up to as irrational a spirit of despondency : they permitted a " MAN to deceive them;"

-that "false prophet" who has so long announced himself as the anointed minister of Heaven, the destined ruler of the universal world,—found too much credit to all his extravagant assumptions, and dazzled and confounded by the splendour of successful am

bition, too many of the nations basely yielded to the seduction of "his signs "and wonders."

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It was in this temper that the world generally appeared around us, when, but a year ago, we were assembled, as at this time, to implore the protection of Heaven. To the former period of false security had succeeded a long period of disaster and dismay conquest had continued to make its unresisted progress; and day after day was still bringing the melancholy relation of thrones subverted, and nations subdued. The hour of universal destruction was but too commonly predicted; and while men looked upon the venerable fabrics of their country with the eye of feebleness and despondency, rather than with the animation of patriotism, they were gloomily occupied with the presages of evil, and said to themselves, "there shall not,

"alas! be left one stone upon another "that shall not be thrown down."

It was in the midst of these dark thoughts that we again "heard of wars, and ru"mours of wars, and were troubled." We imagined, with too much alarm, that the destiny of other empires was at hand : we scarcely hoped to see greater resolution than had yet appeared in the rulers of nations, or greater self-devotion in their people; and we despaired to find one people who should "endure to the "end, and be saved." A third period has since opened upon us, in which we have seen that splendid and animating spectacle, the spectacle of a Prince and a People who would stoop to no base submission,-not " though the abomina❝tion of desolation stood where it ought

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not,”—amid the ruins of their city, and " in their holy place;"-who, though they "left their houses without entering therein

"to take any thing out, and went into the "fields without turning back again for their "garments,"-yet turned back again in arms, and drove before them that "false prophet," and have brought contempt upon all his " lying wonders."

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It is impossible, my brethren, to speak of this proud triumph in language adequate to its magnificence ;-yet it is suitable to this place to feel, that if man did much, God did more ever to recollect, with shuddering devotion,-that the flight of these oppressors was " in the winter," -that "affliction fell upon them, such as "was not from the beginning of the crea"tion, which God created, unto this

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day;"that although they had "rush

"ed like the rushing of many waters,

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yet God rebuked them, and they fled "afar off, and were chased as the chaff of "the mountains before the wind, and like

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a rolling thing before the whirlwind;