concerted at fuch calamitous events as we are daily fubject to. They are evils in themselves, and we do not know to what farther evils they may lead. Even the good that we fee is uncertain, and unstable, and for any thing that we know, may terminate in evil, which it will thereby only ferve to aggravate. In this ftate of mind all is darknefs and confufion, anxiety and dread.

But the moment that we begin to confider the world not as a fatherless world, but that there is a principle of wisdom and goodness prefiding over all, and believe that nothing can come to pafs without the knowledge and intention of this infinite wifdom and goodnefs, the gloom vanishes, and day-light bursts upon us, For though we be ftill at a lofs to account for particular events, and do not diftinctly fee their tendency to good, our firm perfuafion that good is intended, and will be the refult of the whole scheme, is not at all fhaken; and then nothing will remain but a pleasing curiofity with refpect to the manner in which the good will be produced. In the

midst of calamity we can, with this perfuafion, live a life of faith, and of joy. With the devout pfalmift, we can fay, The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice. For though clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his throne.

Thus does the belief of a God and a providence contribute to make a man a much greater and happier being than he otherwife could be. It enlarges his view of the fystem of nature, of which he is a part. It difcovers to him his connexion with, and his intereft in, other beings, and other things. It leads him to look backward to the origin of things, and forward to the termination of the great drama, and to believe that it will be moft glorious and happy.

This end will be much farther promoted by the great doctrine of revelation, that this life is not the whole of our existence, that it is only a state of probation and difcipline, calculated to train us up for a future and more glorious state after death. How different, and how fuperior, a Being must this view, properly impreffed upon the mind, make

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make a man. It is a difference not easy to defcribe, but it may be felt. A Being of a day will have his views, thoughts, and fchemes, adapted to a day. To-morrow cannot interest him, because he has no intereft in it. If he like the scenes of the day, to which his exiftence is confined, his heart must ficken at the idea of any thing beyond it, because he is totally excluded from it.

What then must be the feelings of the man who truly and habitually believes that he is born for eternity; that years and ages bear no fenfible proportion to the term of his existence; that the duration of the fun, moon, and stars, is no more than a period that divides his exiftence, and affifts him in measuring it; that when they fhall be no more, he only, as it were, begins to be, and that other funs and other worlds will be equally fhort lived with refpect to him. How fublime, and how animating, is the thought. Can any thing mean and fordid. occupy the breaft of a being who is perfuaded of this grand deftination? Will he not overlook every thing temporary, and

be

be ever ftretching his thoughts to things eternal, in which his interest is infinitely greater than in any thing here?

We think highly, and justly so, of the advantage which an acquaintance with hif tory gives a man over one who has no knowledge of any events befides those of his own times. We are highly gratified in being made acquainted with the origin, and early history, of the country in which we were born, and of the nation to which we belong. We are sensible that travelling, and feeing other countries, and other cuftoms, than our own, improves and enlarges the mind. It adds to our ftock of ideas, and gives us a greater field for contemplation. It is thereby the means of removing local prejudices, and of leffening the influence of all ideas connected with that of felf.

What, then, muft it be to be enabled, by the help of revelation, to look fo far back as to the origin of the world, to range through all the fucceffive difpenfations of God to man, to contemplate more especially the promulgation of the gofpel, and to look forward to that glorious ftate of things which is to take place

place in confequence of its universal spread; to look farther ftill to the refurrection of the dead, and the day of final judgment, followed by a never-ending eternity?

What a fund of great thoughts do these great fubjects fupply, and how fcanty must be the furniture of that man's mind, let him be a philofopher, an historian, a statesman, or whatever else the world can make him, or he can make himself, compared with that of the meaneft Chriftian, to whom these great and extenfive views of things are familiar.

The contemplation of fuch objects as thefe is fufficient to raise a man above the world, and all the little pursuits and gratifications of it. Will fuch a man as this beftow much thought on the indulgence of his appetites and paffions? Will he envy any man the enjoyment of any thing that this world can give him? or will he have a wish to aggrandize himself, or his family, in it?

He will, on the contrary, be rather apt to defpife it too much, fo as to attend too little to his proper duty in it, fo engroffed