reduced to such sordid want, and pressing necessity, as to be obliged to do the greatest drudgery for a wretched maintenance ?

When God made them to have dominion over the works of his hands; when he put all things in subjection under their feet, and crowned them with glory and honour; they filled up each happy hour in evidencing their love to him and to each other; they spent their golden moments in admiring the variety and beauty of his works, finding out the divine signatures impressed upon them, swaying their mild scepter over the obedient creation, and enjoying the rich, incorruptible fruits, which the earth spontaneously produced in the greatest perfection and abundance. Thus their pleasure was without idleness or pain, and their employment without toil or weariness.

But no sooner did disobedience open the floodgates of natural evil, than arduous labour came in, full-tide, upon mankind; and a thousand painful arts were invented to mitigate the manifold curse which sin had brought upon them.

Since the fall, our bodies are become vulnerable and shamefully naked; and it is the business of thousands to make, or sell all sorts of garments for our defence and ornament. The earth has lost her original fertility; and thousands more with iron instruments open her bosom, to force her to yield us a maintenance; or with immense labour secure her precarious, decaying fruits: Immoderate rains deprive her of her solidity, and earthquakes or deluges destroy her evenness; numbers therefore are painfully employed in making or mending roads. Each country affords some only of the necessaries or conveniencies of life; this obliges the mercantile inhabitants to transport, with immense trouble and danger, the produce of one place, to supply the wants of another. We are exposed to a variety of dangers: Our persons and property must be secured against the inclemency of the weather, the attacks of evil beasts, and

assaults of wicked men : Hence the fatigue of millions of workmen in wood and stone, metals and minerals and the toils and hazards of millions more, who live by making, wearing, or using the various instruments of war and slaughter.

Disorder and injustice give rise to government, politics, and a labyrinth of laws; and these employ myriads of officers, lawyers, magistrates, and rulers. We are subject to a thousand pains and maladies; hence myriads more prescribe and prepare remedies, or attend and nurse the sick. Our universal ignorance occasions the tedious labour of giving and receiving instruction, in all the branches of human and divine knowledge. And to complete the whole, the original tongue of mankind is confounded, and even neighbouring nations are barbarians to each other: from hence arise the painful lucubrations of critics and linguists, with the infinite trouble of teaching and learning various languages.

The curse introduced by sin is the occasion of all these toils, They are soon mentioned, but alas! how long, how grievous do they appear to those that feel their severity? How many sighs have they forced from the breasts, how much sweat from the bodies of mankind! Unite the former, a tempest might ensue : Collect the latter, it would swell into rivers.

To go no further than this populous parish, with what hardships, and dangers do our indigent neighbours earn their bread! See those who ransack the bowels of the earth to get the black mineral we burn: How little is their lot preferable to that of the Spanish felons, who work the golden mines?

They take their leave of the light of the sun, and suspended by a rope, are let down many fathoms perpendicularly towards the centre of the globe: They traverse the rocks through which they have dug their horizontal ways: The murderer's cell is a palace, in comparison of the black spot to which they repair:

The vagrant's posture in the stocks, is preferable to that in which they labour.

Form if you can an idea of the misery of men kneeling, stooping, or lying on one side, to toil all day in a confined place, where a child could hardly stand: Whilst a younger company, with their hands and feet on the black dusty ground, and a chain about their body, creep and drag along like four-footed beasts, heavy loads of the dirty mineral, through ways almost impassible to the curious observer.

In these low and dreary vaults all the elements seem combined against them. Destructive damps and clouds of noxious dust infect the air they breathe. Sometime water incessantly distills on their naked bodies; or bursting upon them in streams, drowns them and deluges their work. At other times, pieces of detached rocks crush them to death, or the earth breaking in upon them buries them alive. And frequently sulphureous vapours, kindled in an instant by the light of their candles, form subterraneous thunder and lightening: What a dreadful phænomenon! How impetuous is the blast! How fierce the rolling flames! How intolerable the noisome smell! How dreadful the continued roar! How violent and fatal the explosion!

Wonderful providence! some of the unhappy men have time to prostrate themselves; the fiery scourge grazes their back, the ground shields their breasts; they escape. See them wound up out of the blazing dungeon, and say if these are not brands plucked out of the fire. A pestiferous steam, and clouds of suffocating smoke pursues them. Half dead themselves, they hold their dead or dying companions in their trembling arms. Merciful God of Shadrach ! Kind protector of Meshech! Mighty deliverer of Abednego! Patient preserver of rebellious Jonah ! Will not these utter a song....a song of praise to thee .....praise ardent as the flames they escape....lasting as

the life thou prolongest !....Alas! they refuse! and some....O tell it not among the heathens, lest they for ever abhor the name of christian....Some return to the very pits, where they have been branded with sulphureous fire by the warning hand of providence ; and there, sporting themselves again with the most infernal wishes, call aloud for a fire that cannot be quenched, and challenge the Almighty to cast them into hell, that bottomless pit whence there is no

return.

Leave these black men at their perilous work, and see yonder barge-men hauling that loaded vessel against wind and stream. Since the dawn of day, they have wrestled with the impetuous current ; and now, that it almost overpowers them, how do they exert all their remaining strength, and strain their every nerve! How are they bathed in sweat and rain! Fastened to their lines as horses to their traces, wherein do they differ from the laborious brutes? Not in an erect posture of body, for in the intenseness of their foil they bend forward, their head is foremost, and their hands upon the ground If there is any difference, it consists in this: Horses are indulged with a collar to save their breasts; and these, as if theirs was not worth saving, draw without one: The beasts tug in patience, silence and mutual harmony; but the men with loud contention and horrible imprecations. O sin, what hast thou done! Is it not enough that these drudges should toil like brutes, must they also curse one another like devils.

If you have gone beyond the hearing of their impious oaths, stop to consider the sons of Vulcan confined to these forges and furnaces. Is their lot much preferable? a sultry air, and clouds of smoke and dust, are the element in which they labour. The confused noise of water falling, steam hissing, fire-engines working, wheels turning, files breaking, hammers beating, ore bursting, and bellows roaring, form the dismal concert that strikes the ears: while a con

tinual eruption of flames, ascending from the mouth of their artificial volcanos, dazzle their eyes with an horrible glare. Massy bars of hot iron are the heavy tools they handle, cylinders of the first magnitude the enormous weights they heave, vessels full of melted metal the dangerous loads they carry, streams of the same burning fluid the fiery rivers, which they conduct into the deep cavities of their subterraneous moulds; and millions of flying sparks, with a thousand drops of liquid, hissing iron, the horrible showers to which they are exposed. See them cast; you would think them in a bath and not in a furnace : They bedew the burning sand with their streaming sweat: Nor are their wet garments dried up, either by the fierce fires that they attend, or the fiery streams which they manage. Certainly, of all men, these have reason to remember the just sentence of an offended God: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, all the days of thy life.

All indeed do not go through the same toil: but all have their share of it. either in body or in mind. Behold the studious son of learning; his intense application hath wasted his flesh, exhausted his spirits, and almost dried up his radical moisture. Consider the man of fortune: Can his thousands a year exempt him from the curse of Adam? No : he toils perhaps harder in his sports and debaucheries, than the poor plowman that works his estate.

View that corpulent epicure, who idles away thǝ whole day, between the festal board and the dozing couch. You may think that he, at least, is free from the curse which I describe: but you are mistaken: While he is living as he thinks, a life of luxurious ease and gentle inactivity, he fills himself with crude humours, and makes way for the gnawing gout and racking gravel. See even now, how strongly he perspires, and with what uneasiness he draws his short breath, and wipes his dewy, shining face! Surely he toils under the load of an undigested meal. A porter