events of the seventh trumpet age, and will be, perhaps, the most fearful of all the judgments of that judgment-day. Hitherto the chastisements of heaven upon the nations have been produced chiefly by wars and famines; but these will cease, and will no longer be known in the earth. The prevalence of Christianity-of course I speak of a Christianity which has God in it-will put an end to wars, an event referred to by the Psalmist in the forty-sixth psalm :

9. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

10. Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen; I will be exalted in the earth.

The peculiar language of these two verses of the psalm apply with striking fitness to this unique visitation. The vial form in which it came was poured out into the air, implying that the visitation would be diffusive, extending generally throughout the earth. And God, in the prophetic words of the Psalmist, is represented as saying, to the ordinary means of judgments upon men, stand still; retire, or give place to my voice, which I will cause to be heard; not in Christendom alone, but in all the earth-not amongst the nations only that have heard my gospel, but the heathen shall also know, by means of this last visitation, that I am God, and my name shall be exalted in all the earth-far and wide, as the air which extends over all the earth, so shall this last visitation extend to all people and lands.

Famine, as well as wars, will cease to afflict the earth. This also will be a consequence of the influence of Christianity. Under its enlightening power, all the great improvements which are beneficial to man and conduce to his happiness have their origin. Increased knowledge in the arts of husbandry, and the vast extent of agriculture, under a state of universal peace, will fill every land with abundance; and if any part of the earth should happen to fail in its supplies, the telegraph will instantly send the cry of want into other coun

tries, and the great steamers and the swift lines of railroad trains will promptly supply the want; so that famine can hardly be contemplated as a possibility in the greatly improved state of agriculture, and the rapidity with which supplies can be thrown from one country into another.

What is to be the rod of this judgment in the last dispensation? The prophet speaks of it as a great hail falling upon men out of heaven. His language is metaphorical, and is intended to represent the existence of some great evil acting upon men with fearful effect-exciting the most intense anxiety and dread. And yet, like the air, it is unseen, uncontrollable, and mysterious; known in all lands, but equally inexplicable to all people.

To answer the question, what is it what is implied by this great and ponderous hail? I should say that there is nothing of an effective providential character known to the world so likely to be this rod, as the Asiatic cholera. Probably the Psalmist, speaking as a prophet, for he was not speaking of his own times, referred to this very extraordinary disease, which he appropriately denominated the pestilence that walketh in darkness-a most forcible illustration of a disease that wraps itself in mystery, and in the midst of noon-day light of medical science eludes and confounds the most keensighted and penetrating researches of medical genius. Nothing answers to the fall of the great and ponderous hail so suitably as this dire and incomprehensible disease. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent; and men blasphemed God, because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.

The blasphemy spoken of in the text is not to be taken in the common acceptation of that term; but what it means here is, that men ascribed to some inferior agency that which was the direct appointment of God. This pestilence, although so mysterious and inexplicable upon any known laws of disease, men still attempted to account for and explain upon natural causes thus defeating the ends or purposes of this

judgment by taking it out of the hand of God, and making it a natural or common-place occurrence. Notwithstanding the plague of this hail was exceeding great-meaning the whole character of this pestilence, its origin and its operation, was strange and wonderful beyond anything known in the order of diseases, and might well entitle it to be regarded as a judgment from God.

The seventh vial was poured out into the air, and this hail fell out of heaven, the common expression for the atmosphere above and around us.

The cholera has its home in the air, and, like the air, we hear the sound of it, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. We feel and behold the effects of the cholera in its death-ravages, but we know nothing else of it. When it suddenly falls upon a whole city and hurries away a part of its population, who has ever been able to tell where it came from? And when it sheathes its destroying sword and departs, who will tell us whither it goeth? It steps from continent to continent, and from one country to another, aud all that we know of it when it makes these gigantic strides is its foot-prints of death which it leaves behind it. At one time it fills the city with death and lamentation, at another it points its death-finger at the quiet cottage, and some of its inmates fall. The mountain-top and the healthful vale afford no security from its ravages. It travels in the crowded steamboats, and makes the solitary river-banks populous with its dead. It strikes its death-blow even in the railroad-car while on its rapid flight. It seizes upon one island in the sea and almost depopulates it, while neighboring islands feel nothing of its effects. It lays its hand of death upon the crowded and busy emporium, and the thronged streets are hushed to silence. Men forsake their occupations and their wealth and fly for their lives, while a neighboring city is untouched by it.

Nor does the cholera pay any more respect to climate or season than it does to healthy or unhealthy localities.

If we trust to the purifying frosts of winter to shield us from its grasp behold! we hear the wail of cholera-death mingling with the storms of sleet and snow. If the balmy breath of summer promises us health and safety from it, alas! the cholera is found concealed in our most delicious fruits. No place, no circumstance, no condition exempts us from it; the sea and the land, the crowded city and the open country, wealth and poverty, are all alike subject to, and have been visited by this most mysterious and inscrutable pestilence.

Is not this precisely what our Lord means, in that memorable conversation with the Pharisees, when they demanded of him when the kingdom of God should come? After giving them many of the circumstances and signs which will precede, or attend the advent of that kingdom, he speaks in this wise: I tell you in that night-Christ had spoken of the night that cometh when no man can see to work—In that day there shall be two in one bed; the one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be in the field; the one shall be taken and the other left.

What can this mean, if it does not refer to this singular and mysterious pestilence? Here are three conditions, which may represent the different states into which human society is divided. First, here is the bed-signifying a state of ease, comfort, and affluence. Secondly, the grinding at the mill is the laboring classes, who work within doors, or free from exposure to the vicissitudes of the weather; and, lastly, the class that performs the laborious service of husbandry; they are upon the open fields, exposed to the heat of summer and the cold of winter. And in those three classes or conditions of men, the agent, or influence, our Savior referred to, made no distinction; and yet, in each of those conditions it makes a marked personal discrimination. Persons situated precisely alike, are strangely separated; one part is cut down, the other is untouched! This accords strictly with the mysterious cause of the cholera.

But some will ask, was not Christ speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem, when he used the language above quoted? Whoever thinks so, let him apply these sayings to that event, and if he can discover any meaning in them under such an application, let him do so.

The Pharisees were very solicitous to learn where this most surprising event should take place; but our Savior made it his business to impart instruction rather than to gratify curiosity, and knowing that these events did not apply to their age, (though they may to our age,) he simply answered: Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together. He does not mean any particular place by this answer, he means to say these things will certainly come to pass. As certainly as the eagles from their lofty flight discern their prey, and rush from the clouds to seize upon it, just so certainly will these things that I have spoken to you come to pass in their appointed time; they will not fail any more than the prey of the eagle fails to fall under the keen, penetrating, far-reaching eye of that bird. But to return from our digression.

With what a mockery does the cholera treat the science of medicine? How it spurns the laws which govern and give identity to all other diseases! How strange are its movements, and how it changes its form and features without changing its fearful power. Indeed, so relenting does it appear at times, that the man of medicine fancies he has succeeded in binding this Sampson of pestilence-that he has found out a remedy; and indulges a strong hope that he will recover the patient; but when he calls again, he finds his bands, with which he hoped he had securely bound the strong foe, broken and shattered like shreds of tow, and he is confounded in beholding the minister of death standing before him in a form in which he had never seen him before.

If the Almighty should commission this destroyer of men to empty the land which he had given to Abraham and his seed for a possession for ever; how short would be the work?