which he has now visited us, occurring as it did in the Navy, the pride of the nation, and not long after another of our vessels of war had perished in a night at the mouth of the Mediterranean, taught us how powerless for our defence, and how powerful for our ruin, he may make our very armaments and ships of war?

"They trust in navies, and their navies fail,
God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail."

is

In the anxiety which some display to entangle our country in war, there not shown a recklessness greatly to be deprecated? We believe government endowed, by the law of God, with power to take away human life-the life of the individual in the case of crime, and the lives of multitudes in the case of a just war. But seeing the butchery, profligacy and wretchedness which war, even when most just, must bring in its train, neither humanity nor piety allows us, for any petty cause, to employ this melancholy and last resort. We may not lightly spread through our borders such scenes as God has lately made us to behold on the deck of the Princeton. To rebuke the spirit of war may have been one merciful design of the recent calamity. It may be easy to unleash the hounds of war, and give them course over some distant territory, by issuing, amid the quiet scenes of legislation and diplomacy, the act that exposes leagues of defenceless coast to the marauder, or consigns some obscure and remote home, upon our frontiers, to pillage and slaughter, and all the tender mercies of the savage, the scalpingknife, and the firebrand. It is not as easily borne to see the ruin entering our own habitations, and the slaughter spread around and upon us. And now that God has permitted, in his wisdom, one of these gory and hideous spectacles, that are but the ordinary accompaniments of battle, to be presented, in a time of profound peace, and almost beneath the shadow of our Capitol, let us pray that the lesson may not be lost on the law-makers gathered in those halls, but that by its severe, yet salutary schooling, it may "teach our senators wisdom."* We believe war, in a just cause, not indefensible: but it may not be lightly undertaken. It is in no careless mood, and for no trivial reasons, that the rulers of this people may bring such scenes as those recently witnessed into the houses and the peaceful commercial marine of our country;— make multitudes of their country women as suddenly widows; and doom, by hundreds, unconscious and prattling infants, thus summarily to orphanage, and to all the multiform sorrows and perils that beset the path of the fatherless.

2. Next, let us not forget that we have, as a nation, received from the Most High loud and memorable warnings. In commercial reverses, has not God checked our reckless love of gain? In the death, shortly after his installation, of a former Chief Magistrate, the first instance in the history of our country of one dying while administering that high office, and in the subsequent removal of members both from the execu

* Ps. cv. 22.

tive and from the legislative departments of our national government, and now again in this startling calamity, is not God reading to us, as a people, lessons of humility, dependence, and penitence? In the history of our present Chief Magistrate, distinguished as he has been by the frequent and near approach of mortality to his person, whilst he himself has been spared, how has God spoken to him, and to the whole land, of the uncertainty of life, and that a higher power than man's controls the affairs of the world! Having seen, as he has done, death vacating the Presidential chair for his occupancy, and soon after vacating again, by the death of the statesman who took it, the chair of the Vice Presidency he had quitted ;-his predecessor in the first office of state falling on his right hand, his successor in the second station of dignity in the land falling on his left hand ;-bereaved, as he has been, by the incursions of death into the circle of his friends; bereaved in his home of a consort, who, from sharing his exaltation, passed soon to the tomb; and bereaved in his cabinet, first, of Legare, rich in promise, talents, and acquirements, and smitten down in the fullness of his strength; and now of Upshur and Gilmer, his personal as well as political friends, men of principle and talent, and possessed of the confidence of the people ;-is there not much to awaken in his behalf the sympathies and prayers of the churches? Commanded as we are in Scripture, to pray for them that are in authority, should not the wish of each Christian patriot be, that a course so singularly marked may, by the grace of God, be sanctified to teach him who has run it, the uncertainty of all earthly honors, held as they are by the tenure of a life so soon spent, and often so suddenly terminated; and should not our prayer be that he who has been, like Paul," in deaths oft," may also, with the Apostle, be able to say, as he reviews the course and purpose of his life, "to me, to live is Christ," and with Paul to add, as he looks fearlessly toward its close," and to die is gain?" For difficult as is ever and in all conditions the Christian's path, and glorious as is his triumph over the world in any lot, the difficulty and the glory are each enhanced in the case of exalted station. To serve God and his generation faithfully, not in the less embarrassed walks of private life, but in a position of eminence, amid the strife of tongues, the collisions and wranglings of parties, and the thronging snares, the incessant and wasting cares, and the heavy responsibilities of public life, needs no ordinary measure of divine grace. And happy, as rare, is the worldly greatness that does not, in consequence, peril the soul of its possessor. And whether tempted unduly to envy or rashly to blame those in eminent stations, are we not as a people warned, by so many deaths in the high places of our land, when not, as is most generally the case, single victims, but whole clusters and groups are reaped for the grave, are we not warned less eagerly to covet distinctions death so soon levels, and more habitually to trust, and more faithfully to serve, that God who only is great, for he is the unchangeable and the Almighty one "who only hath immortality?'

3. Again, do not incidents of this kind loudly call upon the Christians

of the land to know their rights and duties? Are they not warned, that they never, amid the fierce conflicts of party, and the din and routine of business, forget their one profession, and the high principles it involves? Ever is the Judge at hand. His coming is near; and that servant labors most wisely and most safely who does it continually, as under his Great Taskmaster's eye. In the contentions of the day, political or religious, is it not well that the image of death should often interpose itself, casting its chill and calming shadow over the feverish strifes of the hour, lest we cherish against those who oppose us such feelings as we should not wish to recall over their graves, or to be surprised by the summons of death while indulging? It seems but too evident that the churches of our day can retain their hold upon some great and vital truths only at the price of earnest controversy. Yet inevitable as it may be, and in its results most beneficial, it must also be admitted, that most adverse to piety and happiness are the feelings it too often engenders. How harshly do the censures that political antagonists or religious controversialists may utter against their opponents, sound on the ear, when once the subject of them is suddenly entombed; and how pitiable, as we now look back upon them, the exasperated personal bickerings of writers, housed in a common sepulchre. It was an affecting regret of an eminent scholar-it is Erasmus of whom we speak-in the days of the Revival of Letters, that one of his opponents had been snatched away by death, before they could exchange forgiveness for their mutual offences against the law of charity. And if to the political contests, ever eager and rife amongst us, must in this age be added the social agitation, produced by churches " contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints," it will be, as in the near prospect of the grave, and as in constant preparation for a sudden departure, that Christians will best be harnessed, manfully yet meekly, to defend the truth a Savior bequeathed to their charge, the legacy of a Master who overcame by suffering, and who built, as it were, out of the cross upon which he had hung, the steps of that throne where he sits a crowned conqueror. Above all, let Christians remember their duties to their country in the closet. That hand, out of which the prophet saw streaming beams of glory, where are the hidings of Divine Power, is opened, in blessings, to the believer kneeling in his retirement. And when the churches invoke it, that hand arms itself, as with gauntlet and glaive, for the defence of the land, or, as the Psalmist prayed, "takes hold of shield and buckler, draws out also the spear, and stops the way"* of the adversaries. Thus works the Almighty where men are found who make his right arm their reliance, and who, like Daniel, greatly beloved of Heaven, are, like him, constant in supplication before the throne, for themselves, and for their people, and for the Israel of God.

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4. Death, in all its aspects, is formidable to man the sinner, except as it is viewed in its relation to the death of Christ. And if, from all the

Ps. xxxv. 2, 3.

scenes of worldly pomp and rejoicing, from earth's high places of coveted dignity and influence, and from its lowliest nooks of retirement, a path is ever found leading to the grave; so, to the eye of the believer, from every scene in life, and from every theme in morals or religion, there is opened a broad and direct avenue to the grave of his Saviour. The cross of Christ is the world's hope. He who became the

"Death of death, and hell's destruction,"

was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil," and that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death."* To know him is life; to reject him is the seal of the second death, and the earnest of eternal ruin. Well, then, may Christ's sacrifice receive the prominence given it in Scripture and in the scenes of the eternal world. His death was the theme, as Moses the receiver, and Elias the reviver, of the law, talked with our Lord, on the mount, and "spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." It is the glorying of the ransomed before the throne of light. When heaven visits earth, as on the mountain of transfiguration, and when earth visits heaven, as in the ascension of the emancipated and glorified spirit to the general assembly and church of the first-born, this one event is the bond of their common fellowship, and the death upon Calvary is the basis of their common happiness. Exulting in this, the saint looks forward to the last trial as but brief, and its issue as sure and peaceful. The sinner, rejecting the benefits of this sacrifice, does it amid a world which, in spite of his irreligion, is none the less a world of bereavement and death; and on the verge of another world, in which, because of his irreligion, death can never be unstung, whose ruin has no redemption, and on whose dark and heaving sea of wo breaks no solitary beam of hope.

5. It is, lastly, the wisdom of man, born as he is the heir of mortality, to be living in a state of constant preparation for his great change. It was said by that sweet singer of our modern Israel, Dr. Watts, in the latter years of his life, that each night he composed himself to slumber, little anxious whether he awoke in time or in eternity. Of that ornament of the English bench, the Christian magistrate, Sir Matthew Hale, it is said that he was once administering justice, when a strange darkness overspreading the country, joined with some idle predictions that had become current, filled men's minds with alarm, as if the end of the world had come. The devout judge proceeded calmly in the discharge of his office, wishing, if the world ended, to be found in the assiduous fulfilment of his duties. A habitual preparation for sudden death would be itself a sufficient preparation, and the best, for that judgment which some of our erring brethren announce as near.

Are there any scenes or employments in which we should not wish to be surprised by the messenger of death? It is scarce safe to be

Heb. ii. 14; 1 John iii. 8.

† Luke ix. 31.

employed in them for any time, however brief, for that brief hour may bring the close of our days, and seal up our history to the time of the end. Let us not indulge in those things, or busy ourselves in those employments, to be surprised in which would be our shame and our ruin at the hour of death, lest we be like "the wicked, driven away in his wickedness." And what can be more tremendous in prospect than this? Let poverty the most grinding afflict me-let me be racked by disease-let helplessness, exile, and shame wait around my death-bed; but let not sin, unrepented and unforgiven sin, be the companion and curse of my dying hours, for then I perish. The trembling Esther, as she went, in peril of her life, to urge her request, exclaimed, “If I perish, I perish," but perished not. The timorous disciples, as they saw the waters tempestuous, and the vessel ready to be filled, exclaimed to their Lord, "Master, we perish ;" and he arose and spoke, and the waters were calmed, and the disciples saved. But if sin be my master, cherished, trusted, and idolized, no such peradventure as encouraged Esther remains for me. I perish without an alternative, inevitably, and for ever. No deliverance like that which rescued the Apostles will be wrought for me. For if sin be my master, it is a master that cannot save. And the God of heaven and earth will say to the impenitent sinner as said his servant Peter to the sorcerer Simon, "Thy money,"thine idol, be it what it may-" perish with thee." Death is on the way, and hell following with it; and if sin rule in us, the ruler and the ruled, the master and the servant, the idol and the idolator, must sink together into endless perdition. Now by lessons, therefore, in the opening leaves of the volume of Providence, that enforce and repeat the admonitions of the volume of Scripture; and now by lessons in Scripture that illustrate and interpret, in their turn, the visitations of Providence; by the mutual and reflected light of inspiration and calamity, the one explaining the other; by "the rod," and the voice of Him" who hath appointed it," as He wields the one and utters the other, God is instructing us to renounce our sins. He who rules, and who is soon to judge the world, is reiterating over our land his denunciations against sin, his warnings against ruin, and his demands of repentance. Repentance is alike his claim and our duty. Each calamity cries aloud, and this is its message. And from the depths of our own conscience, in our hours of solitude and serious reflection, the summons is re-echoed, "Repent ye." "Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."