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I 1 2X 1 4 6 '?^mkf 9"- A FAST-BAt SERMON, U1'0\ THE DAY APrOINTED IN THE rr.OTINCK OF CANADA, Bg pi-oclamalton of t!)c (l?oiicrnor (Genera!, FOR PUBLIC HUMILIATION BEFOilE GOD, ON ACCOUNT OF THE fRflUBB Al CALAMITiS IN IIW, PREACHED TO THE CATilLDEAL CONGREGATION OF QUEBEC. ■w^ ^ w w ^v^>w^^»^»<^^^^»^^^^^ »^^iM.»,w,^M»^>. ^i0m ^^ir^*"*^ BY GEOIlGfi J. MOUNTAIN, D.D., D.C.L LORD BISHOP OF QUEBEC. U- i T.rLn n~ ii — — ^— ■^^^^-.~ i , y Published by det^re. ^».> v »i^i».»,1» Sc. 4. Fare thee well, great henri 1 lil-weaved ambition how mucli nrt thou shrunk '. When that this body did contain a spirit, A kingdom for it was too small a bonnd; Rut now two paces of the vileat earth Is room enough. t I * ^m'i * m * I » Murder, massacra and war — how large a portion do you make up of the doings of mankind ! — how many blood-stained pages are read in the history of the race ! — which single page is there of that history, from end to end, which is not so stained? — Weapons of death, engines of destruction, contrivances to wound, ii.ii, burn and blow into the air, — vast arma- ments by land and by sea, — skill exerted, science taxed in Us resources,— training, discipline, instruc- tion bestowed, that all may be ready for the business of carnage and the work of ruin and desolation ! — And the best interests of men — such is (thus far, at least) * the constitution of this fallen world— their rights, their liberties, their safety, their peaceful en- joyments, their prosperous condition, their progress in civilization, cannot be preserved to them buc by the power of the sword— nor can we fail often to num- ber among our best benefactors those who wield it, at the hazard of their own lives, in our behalf: A rcmaiLv which applies especially to the army of Bri- tain, in whose ranks also, we have the happiness of numbering man} valuable members of society at large and many excellent Christian men. f • r havo introduoed this qualification, because I wgi.xJ not be understood to pronounce ngainst the lileral fulfilment, in happier dc.yB to come, when the sway oithu Go.'overcd with wounds) mi to deny the Lord Jesus. The catechist cpcaped by the sudden appearance of a party of the Queen's troops. B 10 The common scenes of death are sad : the horrors of war are sadder : but there are horrors which far surpass the ordinary and necessary horrors of war ; and with the details of many such horrors we have been made but too mournfully familiar by the intelli- gence, from time to time, received from India. There, in the grandest dependency of the British empire, our own people, our fellow-subjects, our fellow-Chris- tians, have not only been plunged into the mi^st of tragedies too frightful and revolting to be here pic- tured, but have been the victims— the victims of all the fierceness of hell, as it were, caught up into the bosom of men and let loose upon the unhappy objects of their hatred. God be praised ! — the tide appears to have turned : we have now to mingle thanksgiving with our humiliation and almost to blend, in a manner, festival with fast : yet we may well be checked in any feeling like this, and may fall back in sack-cloth and ashes before our God, — not only in our retros- pect of still recent horrors, or our sorrow for the sacrifice, in our successes, of so many valuable lives, — but in the actual and prospective contemplation of all that must be witnessed before the struggle can be over. We who occupy here another great and distin- guished dependency of thj empire and repose by the mercy of our God, in the bosom of peace and safety, — we shall not be so ungenerous, so unfeeling, so un- * ,' ♦ .. H christian, as to refuse our liveliest sympathy to those who suffer at a distance:— if they are men, that would be enough : but beyond the claim of simple humanity, they are connected with us by close and »a'':'ed ties and identified with us in high and pre- cious interests. And our own turn to suffer may come. We may laugh, some of us, at the idea of our being liable to dangers and calamities like those of India — but there are judgments in multiplied forms, reserved in the hand of God, and we have not been without experience, in this Province, of different severe dispensations. And now that awful and mys- terious pestilence which at intervals within thirty years or less, has made its circuit round the globe, has re-appeared in Europe from whence it was before imported to the shores of Canada. Why should you frighten people, out of the pulpit, with such an idea 7 is the sort of question which is some- times asked— but, except that « knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men *' to seek the open refug;-^ of Lis love, we want to frighten nobody ; we want to prevail upon them in the contemplation of the divine dealings and the judgments which are abroad in the earth, so to draw near to God in Christ and to « cast all their care," for body and soul, upon Him who « careth for them," that they shall be afraid of nothing, nothing whatever ; that they shall be enabled to appropriate the happy language of that faith which 12 prompts men lo " fear no evil, though they walk in THE VALLEY OP THE ShADOW OF DEATH." And 83 with respect to the sanatory precautions of munici- pal authority or of bodies specially constituted to watch over the public safety in seasons of peril from contagion, so certainly with respect to our spiritual health and our prepared condition before our God in this changeful world, it is a wise maxim which says fore-warned, fore-armed. The whole aspect of the times, my brethren, is serious, and in many points of view, it is sombre. Commerce is now one of the great moving powers of the world : intimately linked with the condition and the destiny of nations i and if that interest among men, has, in countries *• whose merchants are princes, and whose traffic- kers are the honorable of the earth," — in Europe and *n foreign America, at home and the colonies,— received a marked and it may be said an alarming check,— we ought, with whatever hope that alQfairs will be permitted, in due course, to right themselves, to consider that it is a check given to pride,to avarice, to worldliness of heart, to a love of extravagant dis- play, to a too adventurous and reckless spirit of speculation, to a too confident reliance upon human resources, to a too ready disposition to put Mammon in the place of God. We ought in the midst of com- mercial reverses or financial depression, to learr^ more sober thought, and to look to it more closely, that our «* treasure " is indeed *' laid up in heaven." »(<» .' 4 13 4 Wherever our hearts are, there is our treasure. If our hearts are not in heaven neither is our hope there assured tu us. If our " life *' is not " hid with Christ in God, " we have * no life in us.'* These arc serious, solemn matters — well to be pondered, tho- roughly to be ascertained, with the remembrance that our religion is not an affair of generalities entertained in the faith of the community; — it is a personal affair with each of us and refers to the state of our own individual souls before God. Pursuing the succession of images presented in our text, I shall no further notice, in its direct literal force, the illustration drawn from the condition of a childUe9 wife, than to point out that if the craving and intense desire for off'spring, * is found in the category of insatiable things, the choice of such an illustration may be accounted for, by a peculiar feeling existing among Hebrew women — a feeling supposed to have been, in a good measure created by the promise that the Messiah should spring from among that people, and the hope, in individual bosoms, of becoming the ancestress of this mighty Messenger of God. We may, indeed, go back to the case of Rachel, who after \ ?ing wedded to the patriarch Jacob, importu- nately cries'out, " Give me children or I die,''' We see how Hannah was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore, and vowed a vow to • The expression ha£ been sometimes taken in another sensd— -but this appears to be the most natural and judicious interpretation. .*^i •--• ■■■* fffo^' JUJl ■'•^•' m 3. ». '■■r'r'«:v->/'\,i1"T / '11 t4 dedicate her son to God if her prayer should be heard. We find in the prophetical writings and in the psalms, many allusions to the same kind of sentiment ; and in the thanksgiving of Elizabeth the mother of the Baptist, who, up to a great age, had been childless, she blesses God that he had ** taken away her re- proach among men,^* as the barreness of Hannah already noticed, had been the subject of jeers from her adversary. This may be enough to explain what kind of allusion is interwoven with the image here considered. I shall forbear in the same manner, from dwelling upon the illustrations in their literal sense which are drawn from the avidity of the earth in drink- ing in the re-iterated showers which fertilize her bosom — and from the ravages of fire of which the fury still augments while there are materials to feed it: Although I might here not inaptly carry back your thoughts not only to the memorable conflagra- tions experienced in our cities, but to a more recent calamity of a sad and awful character, in which the elements of fire and water, in a manner conspired for an extensive destruction of human life. And to all such occurrences we may revert with profit, upon an occasion like the present, since they all ought to have a chastening, a softening and a humbling effect upon our hearts. But it is rather to the emblematical lesson conveyed in these pictures of the text, that I would direct your attention. They may be all taken to figure forth the ungoverned and insatiable passions / It 1 s^ -^^^nJL. /V* ' I' ^^M^E^wS^Jri j> ' ti'jat . ■**■ ■■■MBiaaaHiiiMEaMMMi 1:1::: '■ ^ '■ ^ t 1^ • J 15 of man — bis grasping avarice, his reckless ambition, which the prophet Habakkuk describes by saying that he '< enlargeth his desire as hell and is as death and cannot be satisfied ;" — his indomitable lust, his relent- less and implacable spirit of revenge, thirsting for blood like the thirsty earth which seems to gape and pant for a supply of water — like the horse-leech which sucks itself full and would suck on till it bursts. O what propensities, what malignant, what horrible, what demonlike propensities lurk, often unsuspected within the heart of man — unsuspected perhaps by himself, as Hazael of old, when the prophet wept at the prospect of his crimes and cruelties, cried out reproachfully, •* But what, is thy servant a dog that he should do this great thing?*' — The acts of the mutineers in India, are the acts of men : — any body of men, nursed in a false religion^ their nature uncorrected by those Christian influences which operate upon the social character even where the true power of religion upon the indi- vidual subject, is sparingly known — their dark suspi- cions awakened, their cherished prejudices shocked and alarmed by mischievous suggestions,— their savage passions inflamed to madness and set free to work their will upon their victims, catching a conta- gious fury from man to man, in the rush and amidst the yells of a phrenzied crowd— the rapacity of plun- der and the wild triumph of success mixing them- selves with those other stimulants of fierceness,— st/cA men anywhere^ so urged, so acted upon, are prepared It for every conceivable enormity— and whatever atro- cities they may perpetrate to which we give the names of inhuman and unnatural, — they cannot, in strict propriety, be so called, for they are human doings and the dictates of corrupt and misgui led nature :— Match- ed, in all ages of the world, by a multitude of familiar instances and serving in no manner to invalidate the saying of King Solomon, that " there is no new thing under the sun." Well may wc Mess our God who has given us the Gospel of Grace and Salvation, and earnestly ought we to cultivate our advantages, watchfully to guard them^ openly and convincingly to manifest their effect upon our lives and manner?. And while the empire is engaged in this awful struggle with so ruthless a foe and the power of the empire is put forth to crush this wicked revolt, let us pray that the glories achieved by our arms may be sullied by no such spirit of unchristian revenge as would resemble though but faintly,the very spirit which we are obliged forcibly to quell. Let us watch, if we find the smallest tendencies of such a nature, against any vindictive feeling of satisfaction in whatever awful chastisement our defenders in the East, may be compelled to in- flict : let us pray, this day that neither there nor at the seat of Enpire^ nor here among ourselves, nor any- where else, our people may exult in the idea of retaU iatory proceedings, conducted upon the principle of ** an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Our 17 duty IS, this day, while wc pray for the complete ex- tinction of the revolt and complete re-establishment of British power in India, to confess, at the same time the many delinquencies of our country in the adminis- tration of its Indian conquests and its gross, its deplo- rable deficiency, ( — I speak of the country, as a country and of its government.— for the church and other religious bodies have not forgotten to do some- thing for the spiritual interests of India), — its gross, its deplorable deficiency in the duty of recommending and upholding the Faith of Jesus Christ, in the land; Recommending and upholding it, not hy indiscreej interference, much less by unchristian compulsion as it regards the debasing belief and worship of the natives, — no— but by making our " light shine " In our "good works," that men may own and "glorify our fa- ther which is in heaven," — and by establishing full and efficient provision for the teaching and ordinances of our own holy faith for our own people upon the spot with ail facility given for the extension of that fanh, in favorable openings, to the Heathen. The very reverse of this system— it cannot and ought not to be disguised and might be shewn by miany and glaring examples, — has been seen in the policy pursued by the British Government not in India alone, but in the entire extent of her dependencies abroad, the prodi- gious outlying portions of that empire upo' . which we boast that the sun never sets — and if there can be any- thing to make us tremble with the apprehension that c 18 the sun of her ancient glory is ordained to sell in darkness, it is precisely such a course of policy as this : ** Them that honor me I will honor, and those that despise me," says the Almighty — "shall be light- ly esteemed." And what is it but to despise him if we ignore our own Religion before any people who have not the faith which we profess and put our ** candle under a bushel " lest its light should be offensive !o those who prefer living in the dark 1 Mourn we, then, for the sufferings — mourn we too, for the errors and the crimes of humanity — mourn we in sympathy with mourners, — there are such among ourselves in this place,—who have lost, in this horrible war, what they loved— but let us not forget to mourn — foi that is the special call upon us. in a day of solemn humiliation,— for the siris; of our country, our com- munity and for our own personal sins. We are as- sembled to deprecate the divine judgments and we ought to hope that the Lord will " hear the cry " sent up to heaven in these observances, no doubt from many faithful many penitent hearts, and will *♦ have respect unto '' us. Many and encouraging are the examples in scripture, of impending judgments avert- ed by the timely and sincere humiliation of the people against whom they had been denounced. And let us in cjnclusion, turn our attention to that particular feature of penitence and solemn self-abasement before God, which appears in the charge given to the proud king Nebuchadnezzar that he would " break off his s n e ■ * ♦ 19 »S * ♦ * • sins by righteousness and his iniquities by sliewini mercy to the poor "-or more pointedly still, in the express declaration made by the Almighty of what it is that constitutes the fast which he has chosen ; and the "acceptable day to the Lord: Is not this the fast that 1 have chosen, to loose the bands of wicked- ness, to undo the heavy burd. v.,, to let the oppres- sed go free, and that ye break every yoke 7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house : when thou'seest the naked that thou cover him and that thou hide not thy self from thine own flesh ?"-.We con- tributed to the patriotic fund in the Crimean war :— we shall be equally ready, it may be hoped, to help in the objects of the Indian Relief Fund now. And if we cculd be supposed to demand a precedent for our being thus called upon twice over, to send relief to remote parts of the world, we have precedent in the very beginning of our holy faith, Apostolic pre- cedent, if that will satisfy us, for collections in the case of famine and other calls upon charity, in aid of the poor brethren in distant pa-ts. In our own day, not to speak of what has been done by British hearts and hands, we have seen our neighbors of the Ameri- can Republic, in different instances, sending ship- loads of help to alleviate public calamity in the terri- tories of the British crown ; and we see now, that foreign powers and foreign communities have recog- nized the claim of our Indian sufiercrs upon their 20 bounty. None, none among us, I am persuaded, will be reaJy to murmur because some charitable np- r-.!«. may acciJentally come close together, or to flin<' back ut,on the Church the words of our lest and to say that she is a daughter of the horsdcuh saymg eivc,give. We do say, on behalf of the Church and in maintenance of this or that plea which she com- Biissions us to put forth, we do say gicc s,ive. But we say it in a happy sense. Theio are contmual calls upon a christian : it is a part of the system m which he moves : let him bless God for the opportu- nities of good put in his way. O what can we do better, what happier for ourselves, than to ghe, out ol the means wiih which God, not according to our de- sert but according to his mercy, has blessedus that we may advance his cause or comfort and help his suffering creatures upon earth ^-^Lel us cultivate the maxim, let us cherish the sentiment which we have been taught by Him who gave to us what none other could do,— of Him who gave himself for our salvation, —that IT IS MOBE BLESSED TO GIVE THEN TO BECEIVB. y%