nection of church and state. The early Christian emperors, from a mistaken zeal, endowed the ministers of Christ with wealth and secular power; they cherished and pampered their unhallowed lusts, and thus raised up a powerful, dignified, and titled hierarchy, to be lords over God's heritage, instead of ensamples to the church. But does it follow from this abuse of power, and consequent corruption of Christianity, that governments should not interfere in matters of religion? Are their views to be limited by the grave, and their acts to have no bearing on futurity? Are they to regard man as a mere animal, the creature of a day, and to shut their eyes to his immortal existence, and the retributions of eternity? Free government can not be administered-it can not exist upon such principles; religion is its main spring; that from which it derives all its life and energy; that which gives it a hold on the conscience, and constitutes the foundation of its sanctions. Religion affords the only assurance we have, that the duties either of the ruler or of the citizen, will be faithfully discharged.

It is the grand secret of penitentiary reform. The political economist may exhaust his ingenuity in the construction of prisons, the graduation of punishment, the employments, the classification, and seclusion of the prisons, and after all, it is by means of the faithful disciple of Christ, who carries the bible into the cell, and there with unwearied labour bestows his instructions and his prayers, that the abandoned criminal is converted into a virtuous and useful citizen, and his punishment into a source of public revenue.

True national glory is identified with the glory of God. Our national power, wealth, and resources, the facilities of intercourse, the means of communicating knowledge, the genius of progressive im

provement, with all the rich national blessings we enjoy, were not bestowed to gratify our pride and ambition, or to raise a monument of human glory; but to contribute to the execution of that grand design for which the earth was created: and the spirit of Christendom is bearing forward its governments, faster than we are aware, from schemes of ambition, from murder and rapine, to deeds of benevolence, and Christian philanthropy. Our own rulers have felt the impulse, and partaken of the spirit of the age. They have entered zealously upon the benevolent enterprise of abolishing the traffic in human blood; and have afforded aid and encouragement, in the attempts which are making to impart the gospel and the useful arts, to the heathen in our own land. May we not hope, that under the influence of the same beneficent views, they will ere long give more direct and efficient support to that cause which is emphatically, "peace on earth and good will to man." The time will assuredly come, when kings shall be nursing fathers, and queens nursing mothers to the church; when our judges shall be as at the first, and our counsellors as at the beginning; when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.

This period is approaching. The decree has gone forth "to build up Jerusalem;" and already is the work in progress. The missionary spirit which has so suddenly pervaded Christendom, the great increase of charitable institutions, the constant accumulation of means, the unanimity of efforts, and more especially, the triumphs of the cross which we witness, and of which we hear from every land, demonstrate the agency of an unseen, an Almighty hand, and proclaim the dawn of a brighter day than ever shone on our world.

No man can stand an idle spectator of this scene, and be innocent. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein." All the means of doing good possessed by man are talents committed to him by his Lord and Master, with the command, "Occupy till I come." "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required." The whole world is to be evangelized, and the work is to be accomplished by human instrumentality. The duty is plain and positive; the responsibility certain and awful: an omniscient eye observes every act of fidelity, and every instance of neglect and disobedience; and a day of reckoning is at hand.

In the mean time, the work must and will go on. The purposes of God cannot be defeated by our indifference or opposition. The treasures of the earth cannot long be withheld from the rightful proprietor, and the Sovereign disposer of all things. He will exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high, and overturn, and overturn, till he come whose right it is, and will give it him. The selfishness which cannot be subdued by the mercy of God, may expect to be visited by his judgments: and is there not something in the signs of the times which indicates his displeasure, that the people in Christian lands are so reluctant to engage in his work? "The curse causeless shall not come." Mark the awful visitations of his hand; the wreck of fortunes, the disappointment of human hopes, of prudent calculations, the frowns of his common providence, and especially, look abroad in the commercial world, and in a time of profound peace, and of apparent prosperity, see ruin stalking through the earth like the pestilence, levelling distinctions, and humbling the pride of man; and say, are there not indications of uncommon wrath in the judgments of God? Must it not 1826.-No. 12.

79

Whoso

be some new and aggravated guilt, that has provoked these expressions of his displeasure. The set time to favour Zion is come, and the abundant evidence of the fact, and of the urgent wants of a perishing world, fearfully enhances the sin of selfishness, and calls on the benevolence of God, to awaken men to a sense of their guilt and their duty, by more awful displays of his justice. Our love of the world must be subdued. We never shall feel the full weight of the obligation we are under to spread the gospel, till we possess the spirit which the gospel enjoins. He that loveth father or mother, son or daughter, more than me, is not worthy of me. ever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath he cannot be my disciple. Sell that ye have and give alms. Are these hard sayings? They came from the mouth of Christ. He requires us to have the same mind that was in him; the same indifference to the world, and supreme love and entire devotedness to God. Those only who obey his commands will receive the rewards of faithful servants; while to those who refuse obedience, and who will stand at the last day on his left hand, he will say, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger and ye took me not in; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not." "Verily I say unto you inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment."

To the Editor of the Christian Spectator.

The following reflections suggested by the late mournful disaster at the White Hills, are extracted from a sermon recently preached in that vicinity. They are for

warded for insertion in your journal, should they be deemed of a suitable character. J. C. P.

The more signal events in the providence of God, which from time to time agitate and diversify this scene of things, not only teach a lesson strikingly accordant with the instructions of inspired truth, but are often most accurately described in the very language of the bible. Nor do such providential occurrences resemble the lessons of the sacred record less in the limited influence they have on the heart and life of men. The word of God spreads its pages, and new and impressive leaves on the book of providence are continually unfolding, to attract and interest, but rarely do either fix salutary impressions on the mind. Events which for a season arrest and absorb the public mind, with their deep-felt and solemnly instructive interest, are seen to pass into dim recollection without leaving any memorials of their beneficial sway. In the pestilence, the earthquake, the tempest, and in the sweeping scourge of everflowing torrents, Jehovah sends forth a teaching voice to the children of men; but like his written word, it is misinterpreted, neglected, and forgotten. To give that voice a deeper emphasis to make it understood and felt, by combining its solemn tones with the notes of warning, reproof, and correction which come from the bible, has appeared to me a duty too plain, and an object too desirable, not to be attempted by the Christian preacher. If contemporary events have an eloquence--a pathos-an impressiveness, which far exceeds the highest efforts of human language or thought, not to

give them a tongue, were to affect

a wisdom beyond that which is written. For in such events the Most High himself preaches. He comes down, not it may be, upon "the mount that burned with fire;"

but he is seen to "rend the heavens, and come down," and, while "the mountains flow down at his presence," he repeats again his instructions of old in those terrible acts of his might which the language of his own inspiration best describes. "Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is moved out of his place. The waters wear the stones; thou washeth away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man."

This passage will be perceived to be a very correct, though compendious account of a recent providential dispensation, whose painful catastrophe touched so widely the sympathies of our community. That the mournful occurrence, which has not yet ceased to operate keenly on our common sensibilities, may leave good impressions on our minds, I shall introduce several desultory remarks, the common suggestions alike of the passage just repeated, and of the calamitous event itself.*

*The storm which is here alluded to was so terrific and destructive, that it will, for a long time to come, retain in the feelings of those who witnessed its effects, a kind of lone sublimity in the history even of mountain storms. And though it has but recently filled the newspapers, our readers will not think the space misappropriated which preserves the following record of it, in connection with the above reflections. The account here given is contained in a letter from the Rev. Carlos Wilcox, who, with a party of gentlemen, arrived at the Mountains the day after the storm. They had approached to within fifteen miles the preceeding day, where they were

compelled to stop by the descending rain.

"The storm continued most of the night [28th of August:) but the next morning was clear and serene. The

One important lesson forcibly taught amidst the scene of the desolations alluded to, is the frailty of This undeniable, though of ten forgotten truth, is more com

monly illustrated and enforced, by comparing our animal nature to the most fragile, transient, and perishable objects around us. We resemble the grass, the flower of

scenery, we all confessed that we had never seen a mountain torrent before. The water was as thick with earth as it could be, without being changed into mud. A man living near in a log hut showed us how high it was at daybreak. Though it had fallen six feet, he assured us that it was still ten feet above the ordinary level. To this add its ordinary depth of three or four feet, and here at daybreak was a body of water twenty feet deep, and sixty feet wide, moving with the rapidity of a gale of wind between steep banks covered with hemlocks and pines, and over a bed of large rocks, breaking its surface into billows like those of the ocean. After gazing a few moments on this sublime sight, we proceeded on our way, for the most part at some distance from the river, till we came to the farm of Rosebrook, lying on its banks. We found his fields covered with water and sand, and flood-wood. His fences and bridges were all swept away; and the road was so blocked up with logs, that we had to wait for the labours of men and oxen, before we could get to his house. Here we were told that the river was never before known to bring down any considerable quantity of earth, and were pointed to bare spots on the sides of the White Mountains never seen till that morning. As our road, for the remaining six miles, lay quite near the river and crossed many small tributary streams, we employed a man to accompany us with an axe. We were frequently obliged to remove trees from the road, to fill excavations, to mend and make bridges, or contrive to get our horses and waggon along separately. After toiling in this manner for half a day, we reached the end of our journey, not however without being obliged to leave our waggon half a mile behind.

*

On our arrival at Crawford's, the appearance of his farm was like that of Rosebrook's, only much worse. Some of his sheep and cattle were lost; and eight hundred bushels of the field, the vapour, and the fleeting shadow. Although such figurative representations as these scarcely more than literally describe the weakness and frailty of our mor

oats were destroyed. Here we found five gentlemen who gave us an interesting account of their unsuccessful attempt to ascend Mount Washington the preceeding day. They went to the "Camp" at the foot of the mountain on the Sabbath evening, and lodged there with the intention of climbing the summit the next morning. But in the morning the mountains were enveloped in thick clouds; the rain began to fall, and increased till afternoon, when it came down in torrents. At five o'clock they proposed to spend another night at the camp, and let their guide return home for a fresh supply of provisions for the next day. But the impossibility of keeping a fire where every thing was so wet, and at length the advice of their guide, made them all conclude to return, though with great reluctance. No time was now to be lost, for they had seven miles to travel on foot, and six of them by a rugged path through a gloomy forest. They ran as fast as their circumstances would permit; but the dark evergreens around them, and the black clouds above, made it night before they had gone half of the way. The rain poured down faster every moment; and the little streams, which they had stepped across the evening before, must now be crossed by wading, or by cutting down trees for bridges, to which they were obliged to cling for life. In this way they reached the bridge over the Amonoosuck near Crawford's just in time to pass it before it was carried down the current.

On Wednesday, the weather being clear and beautiful, and the waters having subsided, six gentlemen, with a guide, went to Mount Washington, and one accompanied Mr. Crawford to the "Notch," from which nothing had been heard. We met again at evening, and related to each other what we had seen. The party who went to the Mountain were five hours reaching the site of the camp, instead of three, the usual time. The path for nearly one third of the distance was so much excavated, or covered

tal race, yet the very slight departure from a strictly accurate description, does in the case of not a few, greatly diminish the weight of impression left on the mind.

with miry sand, or entirely blocked up with flood-wood, that they were obliged to grope their way through thickets almost impenetrable where one generation of trees after another had risen and fallen, and were now lying across each other in every direction, and in various stages of decay. The Camp itself had been wholly swept away; and the bed of the rivulet, by which it had stood, was now more than ten rods wide, and with banks from ten to fifteen feet high. Four or five other brooks were passed, whose beds were enlarged, some of them to twice the extent of this. In several the water was now only three or four feet wide, while the bed of ten, fifteen, or twenty rods in width, was covered for miles with stone from two to five feet in diameter, that had been rolled down the mountains, and through the forests, by thousands, bearing every thing before them. Not a tree, nor the root of a tree, remained in their path. Immense piles of hemlocks and other trees, with their limbs and bark entirely bruised off, were lodged all the way on both sides, as they had been driven in among the standing and half standing trees on the banks. While the party were climbing the Mountain, thirty "slides" were counted, some of which began near the line where the soil and vegetation terminate, and growing wider as they descended, were estimated to contain more than a hundred acres. These were all on the western side of the mountains. They were composed of the whole surface of the earth, with all its growth of woods, and its loose rocks, to the depth of 15, 20 and 30 feet. And wherever the slides of two projecting mountains met, forming a vast ravine, the depth was still greater.

Such was the report which the party from the mountains gave. The intelligence which Mr. Crawford, and the gentleman accompanying him, brought from the Notch, was of a more melancholy nature. The road, though a turnpike, was in such a state, that they were obliged to walk to the Notch House, lately kept by Mr. Willey, a