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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 uW ^■■rr / ■1" 'I II jii^iii. w Vi I ' l*« t. ^-iVs*^' /^ '^1* A DISCOURSE DELIVERED IN u ©!•, ^issTDm^w© (93SW3E®3S, ^^mm 09 THE FOURTEENTH DAY OP DECEMBER, 1838, BBINO ▲ BAY OF PUBLIC FASTING AND HUMILIATION, APPOINTED BY AUTHORITY. (I ^ BY THE REV. W. T. L^ACH, A. M., EDIN., Minister of St. Andrew's Charcb, Toronto, TCMIONTO: PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE BRITISH COtONIST, 54, Newgate Street 1839. / ' sSfeai 'Vj, Mi^fe^S? '??, A DISCOtlRSE DSlIVEaBD lie g^„ jSi^mW 6NTI1B FOlTRTiaEiNl'il DAY OF DECfciiBEll, 1838, BBUrO' A BAY aP PUBLIC FASTING AND HUMILIATION, APPOINTiaJ BY AUTHORITY. iY THE ftEV. W. t. LEACHf, A. M., EDIN., Minister of St. Andre w'« Church, Toronto. TORONTO: fStlVTED AT The office of the BRITISH COLOHIST, 54, Newgate Street, 1839. ■HH^WtJS^tEJtraiiit^- DISCOURSE. HosEA V. 15.— "In their affliction they wiU seek me early." The religious sentiments of a people among whom any sense and knowledge of religion exist, are generally awakened in times of public calamity. It is experienced at such seasons that the results of the ordinary course of human conduct cannot be depended upon with certainty, nor anticipated with the same intensity o( cheerful hope as when the state of things is regular and settled. When the great bonds of society are violently strained, the interest of the indi- vidual is found to be implicated in the public evil, and the l.tt^e plots and private schemes of adventure that compose the drama of life and business of men, are often entangled and knocked up in the general confusion and alarm; people begin to lose their reckomng; rumours come floating from all parts of the land, and create most extensive mischiefs by mere exaggeration ; the heavens gather blackness and the gale that tries the toughness of the creaking mammast stretches too severely the slender ropes that depend upon its steadmess, and twine round its top. The timid and luxurious are the hrst to feel alarm for the new duties which a change of scene may probably demand from them. To be called upon to suffer, to n.ake sacrifices to the exigencies of the times, to be exposed to danger and rernoved forcibly from one's old habitudes and dependencies-these ask pa- tience, fortitude, and decision of principle. The larger portion of society, when the state of public affairs is peaceful and Fosperous have no greater care than the gathering in of the sheaves of their bar- vest. They are satisfied with things as they are, and give th^ir own powers, natuinl or acquired, tjie credit lor the production and con- tinuance of such a state. The earth is theirs and the fulness thereof; they can command its advantages; its pleasur£S come at their bid- ding and it see^ns to have been made for their satisfaction and prosperity ; no God interposes a visible ag«ncy ; human will alone seems to be the great agent in human affairs. In such circumstattces men are under a lesser necessity, to speak unspiritually, of applying to God. They imagine they can afford to live without any lively acknowledgment and profound impression of a supreme superintend- ing providence. But when this common state or relation of things, is broken up, we begin to recogni;ee the fact that the dominion of God is not confined to the armies of heaven, but that he rules like- wise among the inhabitants of the earth.; to feel that we are depend* ant upon a power whose arrangements are made without asking our advice, and wliose decrees are brought to pass without consulting our conveniency. We then perceive that he can eithcF prosper of ^iii^t us, that he can either reward or punish us, and by the pres™ sure of external calamities can extort from ua the confession that there is a God who reigiis, a Divinp apd Sacred Majesty, m whom alone we live and move and dwell. National calamities have always been interpreted as the judg* meats of God— his method of animadverting upon the wickedness of men, and one of his means of correcting it; for doubtless they are preceptive as well as punitive. They are the sharp arguments by which he instructs his creatures in the right. The same angel that has a commission to destroy, has an errand of mercy to perform, and that errand is performed, and the whole desigp of God in such calamities fulfilled, when people have sense enough to feel the bit- terness of their sins, to be penitent before God, and to return from the error ot their ways. God has not thought it sufficient for the gopd of mankind to send them words of advice, and instruct them in such lessons of heavenly wisdom as he has published to the worl4 frqni time to time. They, in their darkness, rpay reject these; thcjr may be too wicked ami brutish to discern thuir beauty and estimate their value. He has therefore reserved to himsell.and is still pleased to exercise, the high prerogative of afflicting and even destroying those who offend him. To make the worst better, and to improve the good, he chooses for himself the season and the way of making heavy the weight of his paternal arm upon them. Even the iine gold he purifies in the fire ; even over the daughter of Sion he spreads the thick thunder-cloud of his anger. By these means all men that «re capable of understanding anything, are taught to connect their afflictions with their sins. At any period of public calamity, there- fore,aday of Fasting and Humiliation may be reasonably appointed; 6uch an appointment coincides with a natural sentiment ; its observ A^ce is required in strict conformity with both our natural and religious obligations. The chapter from which the words of our text are taken, con- tains a formal accusation against the house of Israel and the house of Judah. At that epoch of Jewish history, ten of the tribes of Israel revolted from their lawful ruler, who, agreeably to the form of government and practice of the Jews, had been anointed to his office by divine authority. The tribe of Judah alone persevered in its allegiance to the ancient constitution. The nation was accord- ingly divided into the loyal and apostate, but it happened that both had offended God, and both parties were thereiore subjected to punishment. Their disunion and mutual hostility were severely punished. They reaped the fruits of anarchy in the consumption of national prosperity, in the disgraceful weakening of their principle of self-defence, in the infatuation of their counsels and their aban- donment to the baser passions that work so terribly when society is passing into disorder and dissolution ; and God was pleased to make known to them by a message from Heaven, communicated by the Prophet, the special cause of their afflictions and disasters, and even -distinctly to tell them that their afflictions would endure as long as Ibeir sins, and be propbrtbned with severe justice to their enormity. ^t he declares that in their afflictions they will seek him early.— How merciful sucli afflictions then 1 How admiiable the grace and Ibrbearnnce of the Almighty to mnke the ills ol life a discipline for the production of piety, righteousness and peace. That such may be the fruits of the public calamities that have fallen upon us.it behoves us, every man forhimseir,to maUe inquisition into his own transgressions. Let every one have recourse to the sim- ple plan of recollecting what his past life has been. Seriously reflect- ing upon the w-iys in which he has hitherto walked, let him scrutinize with jealous care,howiner painful it may he. the motives of his actions and the sources of his errors, imploring the divine mercy for the deserted duties and boldly connnitted sins of the past, seeking too from Heaven the guidance and assistance of the Divine Spirit to keep him from evil in the time to come. If hi^ have the heart to do so, he may avail himself of this day of Fasting and Humiliation,to thank God that his chastisement has been so gentle, that the day of his sin was not the day of his death, and that time has been allowed him to give battle to the depravities of his own nature, and strike in for the rewards of Heaven and immortality. It were enough to make the melancholy considerations of such a season tolerable and even acceptable, to recollect that we enjoy what no miserable sinner that has descended quick into the jaws of hell now enjoys, an oppor- tunity of propitiating the God of our fathers, and that we are not yet such wretched creatures of His as not to call upon the name of the God that made us. When this self-inspection and insight into our own souls,shall have laid open to us our depravity and danger, we shall then see that no formal or external chnpe of godliness will do, that no mere belief, however intense it may be, in the 'traditions of former times, no customary vvay of serving God with the lips, with words and phrases, or even with feelings and passions, will promote our moral and spiritual regeneration,— -nothing but the kind of spirit that is God's, the same spirit that dwelt in the bosom of Christ. To the inconsiderate it may seem vain and superfluous to apply to God in a solemnity of such degree, on account of the outrageous incursions of a number of houseless and expatriated men. Were that the only evil, it were indeed a superfluous solemnity. The only duty that should then devolve upon us, would he, that implied in such a warrantable interpretation of the will of God as this, when thft wicked are violent let the good be strong to overmaster them. But this is not the only evil already experienced, or to be appre- hended in future. The full amount of it is not composed of the murders alieady perpetrated ; of the cxpenbc and endurance sus- tained in the suppression of lawless invasions ; nor of our commercial difficulties, the undervaluation of property, the turning aside of the stream of emigration, leaving the earth unpastured, and therefore barren, and its mills useless for want of grist ; these, although you should add to them the sense of insecurity and the spectral tenors that oppress the timid looking to distant events, are evils not the most momentous in the judgment of him who is ambitious of the honour of his countrymen — the earth's best blood, and their improvement in everything good and divine. These are only the exponents of the evils that more immediately afflict us ; they are the manifest effects of that licentious imposture which, having been long suffered to practice upon the ignorance,the imagination, and passions of the population of the province, has at length persuaded niany persons to believe, that the support necessa- rily given to the functionaries of the Government is " a consuming- glory in which their liberties are destroyed." Our calamities are to be traced to the moral corruption that has seized upon the spirit of the land— that corruption which has been efficacious for the produc- tion of a common belief and understanding that the pious and prolane, the wise and the foolish, the base and the honorable, are indiscrimi- nately worthy of esteem, and equally capable of conducting a com- monwealth to its highest degree of felicity and excellence, and that a form of Government which has this principle of equality for its basis, is alone safe and desirable— conclusions contradicted by the order of Providence, and every decree of God made known to us in the book of the history of man. We may not say with Plato that B tvery wicked mm ought to he a slave, although he generally beconws^ one ; but it is difficult to see what any one can have to object against being obliged to do what is truly good at the same time for himself and others. If he is under no such obligation, then his case must stand in one or other of these predicaments, that he is obliged to do what is not truly good, or obliged to do nothing. To the fiiSt yoint it is not necessary to speak anything ; with regard to the other, it is easy to see that for every man to be under no obligation and restraint, is the perfect triumph of iniquity. Every man is in thut case his own legislator, and every law which he enacts will be introduced of course with the significant preamble— "I willdfe»itifit pleases me." His conscience only remains to serve him with a pro- cess for any enormity he may commit, but his self-love and appetite may be the keepers of his conscience, and he has alwajs' a willing^ executive in his hands, his feet, and his teeth. No one can suppose that any degree of excellence of individual character, is likely to be exemplified in such circumstances ; and as a great portion of thi» class or description may be expected to emerge in every political body, it is evident that whenever their votes shall be most numerous, their triumph is accomplished ; and our tendency to this depraTed" state of moral sentiment is, in my opinion, the root of our calamities. Since we were last called upon publicly to humble ourselves before God in a similar manner, and for similar reasons, it must be confessed that as a people, we have fallen into a still larger arrear of transgressions. We have been making additional plunges into bar- barism. By the pressure of circumstances, we have been still advancing in unpeaceableness and revengefulness. Be the caude what it may, we are neither so tranquil nor contpnted,nor sb studious of the good arts that belong to a happy and well combined society. In addition to the elements that work their perfect work c' confusion m the midst of us, we rausi permit the wickedness of Other meti, it seems, to make us wicked. Instead of acting wlthih the terms of such a settled and constitutional course of conduct as may enno1)Ie us in the history of mankind, and n-iark us out as a high-soufed aft* 9 generous rac&i struggling for what is best in the conscious strengtli of manhood, has nothing been done, it may be asked, that can neither be sanctioned on earth, nor ratified in heaven? If we shall suffer ourselves to become assimilated in character to the enemy with whom we contend, and da tht^. sort of things which they do, we«hall become in process of time, and that rapidly enough, as miserable a crew as subsist in the wilds of Kentucky, or in any creek and crevice of the Western hills. As the latest colonists of the American Con- tinent, it behoves us to exemplify in a superior degree the spirit of the race we have sprung from. Our departure from their practice can only be interpreted as a proof of our weakness ; and what is the cause of that weakness but our disunion and insubordination 1 As little as possible need be said of that grasping and scrambling which, protracted to the present, has made the heart of the country faint and weary, and which, if henceforth prolonged, must of necessity ren- der it fainter and wearier still. Ft is possible that we all may have qrred, and therefore it becomes us, as we are this day called upon, to prostrate ourselves before the face of the heavenly throne ; to collect our scattered thought? from the mountains of vanity ; to fast and to humble ourselves before God ; to confess the greatness of our transifressions, and acknowledge the justice of our punishment. ■'The idea of connecting the prosperity of a people with the per- formance of the duties of a holy religion, is thought by many but a priestly invention, and very vague relation of cause and effect ; but this error of theirs is a radical one, and is just arj extreme as bad as those debasing superstitions which long corrupted the morals of man- kind. Men in their natural revulsion from these, found in a licen- tiousness a state accommodated to the low degiee of their moral and spiritual character. The rage of the south-wester is replaced by the chill fury of the north-wester. In neither extreme is either the truths of God or human happiness to be found, but between these there remains the whole body of sacred and indestructible truth that is necessary for the well-pleasing of God, for the regene7fttbn of the individual, and well-being of society. We believe that the duties prescribed by our holy religion, i« sufl5cient for all the ends of society ; while it must be confessed, that so perverse sometimes is the interpretation of its truths, and that it is so easy to prevail upon any class of men to believe that God is a party in their cause, when their cause is one that advocates their liberty to do what they like, that we should despair of its eflScacy for good,wereitnot a historical fact sufficiently proved in the whole course of the navigation of human affairs, that mankind have been bettered by it in every condition of their existence. All experience corrobo- rates the reasonableness of its claim to our reverence and admiration, and adds its testimony so unequivocally to the conclusions of reason, that we may admit it for certain that we cannot well subsist without it, and that no good we can propose to our fellow-creatures is truly good, that is based upon any other foundation. This is a principle of political economy of a very ancient date, having been taught from the first day of man's creation until now, standing its ground yet as well as any of them ; and notwithstanding all the exceptions that may be adduced, and all appearances to the contrary, it may still be regarded as a law of our being, that our estate is good only in proportion to the degree of our resemblance to God, and this resemblance is the end of our faith and the salvation of our souls. The laws of a country are best that are founded upon an explicable principle of justice, — and in most Christian communities, the rules of Christianity have materially modified the articles of their civil laws ; so much so, that we may unquestionably consider out own, as the nearest approximation to perfection that has been made. But for all that, they are justly to be charged with a portion of our afflictions, on account of a certain impracticable roughness on one point, that had no business to be found in them, when applied to this province of Upper Canada. Though this be allowed, there are sins enough remaining to humble us, the burden of which no art can transfer from our shoulders to the stony table of the kw. Nor ought any effort be made to lay our sins at the door of those who have administered it. It is easy for us to know what we like 11 best, but not so easy for any man to judge what is best for th whole ; and it were most inexcusable ingratitude not to hold them worthy €f the greatest honour, whose practise is,rather to abide by the letter of a Constitution than suffer one article after another to be changed and blotted out ; " Vir bonus est quis ? ^ui consnlta Patrura, qui leges jaraque servat." But to whatsoever quarter we go in order to trace the source of the sins from which our afflictions have arisen, we shall have to return speedily to the place whence we started. These afflictions can serve no good end, and may justly be considered as the fore- runners of otherB much more severe, unless they lead to the disclosure of our sins. Look to the ill-return we have made for the blessings which God has so long bestowed upon U8,and our unmindfulness of his past deliv- erances. In contemplating the n^itural advantages of the land in which we live, we cannot but advert to its great extent and fertility, yield- ing treasures of plentiful harvests, and affording to the industrious and intelligent, a sure though laborious remuneration ,• to the vast extent and number of the inland Lakes, together with the flow of that majestic river, which afford the means of a far extended com- merce, and may be the receptacles and emporiums of an almost boundless trade ; we cannot but advert too even to the healthfulness of its climate, by which we are saved from those periodical ravages and desolating calamities which in tropical climates so often scatter destruction and death. The pestilence which walketh in dark- ness and the destruction which wasteth at noon day, have been, though but recently, yet rarely experienced. All these are the bountiful gifts of Heaven, which, however, they may be overlooked by us, ought undoubtedly to warm the heart, to call forth the praises and excite the gratitude of every serious and reflecting mind. But these advantages would be comparatively of small importance were they not accompanied with others. 12 This was once a peaceful and happy country; none in which a greater measure of personal and political liberty could be enjoyed. No despotism grinded the faces of the poor, darkened the fair scenes of nature, and converted the habitations of men into abodes of misery. There was the enjoyment of personal liberty ; there was security of property ; there was the desire and endeavour to open up new sources of national prosperity. It is not very many years ago since the fathers of this counlry,its original settlers, "broke the heart of the wilderness."* They pitched their habitations in a land, then an inhospitable and grim solitude. They were supported, however, under their privations. Their wants were sup})lied, and though they had to encounter many formidable evils, there were many more fronri which they were delivered. The frontier settlements of the old Colonies were often laid in ruins by ihe angry incursions of the native tribes, and liable to a constant ter.-'or from their success- ful Pttack— an attack from creatures whose best use of a triumph, seemed to them to consist in the use of their tusks, the tomahawk and scalping knife. Little more than half a century has elapsed since the first settlement ; and when we reflect, how much prosperi- ty and happiness have since that time been enjoyed -how nmch has been done in the way of fixing and improving the social edifice — • how much has been effected towards a universal and just adminis- tration of the laws, without which the hesitations of men are but dens of rapine, filled only with mangled and unburied bones — how much has been done in the way ol extending the means of religious instruction too, notwithstanding the obstacles that have arisen and might naturally have been expected to arise; when we consider these things, together with the great increase of population, and the exter- nal improvements which have been made, I am sure they ought to be regarded as instances of the favour which God has shown to this young country, granting it even in its earliest yotith, advantages which have been bestowed upon all other lands only after ages of the severest trials. Such are some of the important advantages with * ''Our fathers,*' saya Mr. Isaac Li^ndy, " our fathers broke the heart of th^ Canadiftn wjldemcis.'' • ' 13 which we in this country have been ble.'L^ed, but which like till other blessings we have undervalued, because we have Ion- been accus^ tomed to their use. One would think they had been sufficient to cause us to seek God early, and that the sharper ,huI more stimu- latrng motives awakened by affliction would have been unnecessary. Look aorain to the deliverance which the providence of God acconriplished for us last winter, and think of our unu.indfulness of fhat. Had this country been subjected to the miseries of an intestine war, which the successful issue of that conspiracy would in the h'ghest degree of probability have occasioned, all the past advance- tnent which has been made in civil and reli-iou:5 affair.^, would have been counteracted. There must have taken place a prostration of all law. The organised system, which secures justice between man find man, which restrains a-i'l punishes, and thereby prevents the disorders that arise from their malignint passions, their inhumanity and their revenge, would have at once been effectually broken in pieces. A course of mutual retaliation and suffering would have speedily convinced us, that our lines had fallen in unpleasant places. It must have effected an invasion of all the-decencies of social life, a subversion of all cheerful and comfortable existence, a substitution of force and violence for reason and persuasion. The brute would have travelled undisturbed among every man's corn. A state of constant terror ivjore intolerable than deaih, of suspiciousness and forebodin-, and at last ,-, state of tmn.'-~ fields of weeds and desolated gardens, wouk: > u-e banished to other quarters of the globe as many as had the means of betaking themselves to a place of quietness and order. Many centuries might have n;issed away before its political and social interests were based upon so strong and broad a lounda- lion. When we look therefore to the miseries which we were allowed to escape from, had we no reason to be mindful ot that deliverance of God's, by which he left us in the enjoyment of so mciny mercies and saved us from so many evils, doubtless with a yiew to give us time to repent and reform. u Now, it may be asked, have either the blessings which we have enjoyed, or the deliverances w» have experienced, or even the afflic- tions which hitherto have been sent us, reluctantly as it were, and as light as possible, have these produced the effects that might' have been expected ? Have they made us more alive to the turpitude of impiety and to the necessity of promoting aud encouraging such impressions of religious truths as may prove really beneficial to human character. We find thui God has never thought prooer to bless With any long course of prosperity any country wh;re unrighteousness had no curb, and where impiety was no disgrace: 1 han the absence of these there can be no surer sign of dissolution, ior when we consider how many diverse principles and various materials enter into every social mass, liow many wild and head- strong passions are to be controlled, how m.ny contending interests, how many envious and malicious and iil-stlfled bloody purposes are to be kept in awe, how much clamorous ignorance and grasping ambition .are (o be withstood and regulated; when we consider in what manner this mighty flood of evil is prevented from overflowing Its banks, we can discover a suffici.^nt means of security and peace, only in the moral character of a people; produced by the constant practice of the duties which religion prescribes. What else is it that changes the strength oi wickedness into weakness ? The restrain- mg power of the civil larw, had it no broader foundation than its mere utility, were but a frail barrier, and wickedness would find its crooked way where no lash nor bonds of the laws could reach it. Itjs true that there is a natural sense of what is right that often flashes conviction upon the soul of a criminal, and inspires with in- tolerable fear the heart of a murderer, let him hide himself in the thickest and darkest bush. But how is this natural sense to be renewed where it has become nearly extinct ? And how is it to be improved to any high degree, without a constant reference to God m all the events of providence, and in the acUons of our lives. We wonder at the wickedness of the world, when we ought to wonder at the defectiveness of the means we have employ- «d to prevent it,^whe:i instead of laying broad and deep the 15 foundation of a systen. of moral and religions in.tructio,,, wc believe that God W.1I send the means of seeurity and peace, whieh we never sou,h. for, and force npon us a blessing we scarcely seenMo desire ; for ,f these means, to be found in the practise of a holy and unexcepfonable religion, /.„„. bee. sought lor, and have been fr WhT fr'™"' '""'"^' ""^ "^'^ '"'^ "»' '-" -ploy- has lat^lyttdit:;:;'''" " ''''"'' "■" "-" "^"-' -"-"^« v.r.Jffl?"' ""'"u""'" ''"'"''' '""" "f ""' »«'' one of the se- ve est tt(B,ol,ons we have to fear, is when the passions of corrupted nature are let loose to theirown fury, unrestrained by laws divine or human; when one person looks with distrust in the lace of faith m the transactions that men must daily have with one another and when the whole will probably become bankrupt of that nalnM CO Mence wh,ch ,s «, necessary to prosperity in this human world. Be ,des, what hen becomes of the saeredness of an oath, and who W.1I be secure from the perjury of scoundrels, the hreath of whose nostnlsrs the tee of wickedness. When ten thousand men " h^ neither fear death nor hell,- can be brought together and unite in a quarrel of the.r own, all rule is nearly at an end, and the stage Is prepared for the perpetration of any wickedne.^. But this is the sort of thing that is to reign and triumph amo.^ us, unless good men shall combine, and put a bridle in the jaws of the bad In the course of half a century, you who have imported with you the sentiments and honourable intelligence of your race may cease and depart from the face of thU earth, without leaving a footmark behind. It is not the first time that this new woild has been colonized, and the colonists swamped by the inundation of barbarism ; and there is the same tendency and danger still, though mightily mitigated. Our chance of a permanent retention of alt that looks to perfection among men is the best, because the last We have the advantage of .all that have gone before us in civilized id life. VVc can see the roclcs upon which thev s|)lif, and the shoaFr upon which they nre well nigh founclering. VVc can now see if we can sec anythin- and Inlly appircinte the (act, that the human beinq; is not yet s) perfect hut that the p^reatcr mass in every com- niunity woiiM he lawh-ss and wJL-ked, hut for the restrain'ts tiint oblijre thetn to he >ocial and prosperous. No prospect can he worse to a good man ihrui to have th^vse restiaints, which are the silken cor(i.sofson and shallered. He sees that there is no chance for him m existrnee, if th,. malice of Iiisown human nature IS not enca^^(^d. I he remotest prospect of such a state of disorder and ungodliness ,s enough to justify our fears ; and (he remotest tendency to it calls for iiumiliation helbre the Ihce of God The prospect of this ougiit to awaken our /ears of Divine anger : and that this quickening anrj powerful motive mi-ht have its due influence on us the piety of the Lieutenant Governor, in this dav of Fastinir and Humiliation, has, in the true spirit of Christian patiiotism.engaKcd our attention to it. If there he any judgment near us, any evil consequent upon our transgressions to he apprehended, as unques- tionably there are let us lose no time in our application for mercy. Lvery dissuasive from sin and every call to repentance should be heard vvjtn the same impression as if we saw the grave of our country s honour open, and our own graves dug and measured for our recep:,on TU, greatest curse of war is, not to be slain in it, iMit to imbioe the fiendish piinciples of those with whom we combat 1 he greatest calamity of 'var is not to be conquered, but to be conq^iered by those who vvill entail upon the land an ungodly spirH and degraded state of humanity. From these evils, human wisdom and power is no sure defence, though walls of fire and brass should encompass, us round ; w<. still lio open to the artillery of heaven; and J God have a quarrel wiih us, our case is hopeless. Let us hasten therefore, to avert, by our repentance, the just anger of God Let us resolve, each in his station, to oppose as far as we are able the growing corruption. Let every one cast away his own iniquities, and while he has time and space for mercy, try to cleanse and purif^ Ills heart from every low, selfish and dishonorable end. Then shaft the cloud which has so long settled between the land and heaven rend ai twain and separate. Then shall the voice of our prayers be heard in heaven. No evil shall approach us or destroying anirel come near our dwelling. The providence of God shall watch over us, and his lovmg-kindness defend us as a shield. If in our affile, tion we seek God early, let us believe he will save us from the evils ot time, and reward us with joys that are everlasting. AMEN. (