ON THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. MY DEAR FRIENDS, 1832. THEY must have eyes that see not, and ears that hear not, and minds that reflect not, who do not discern the signs of the times in which we live, and gather from them, that wrath is gone out against us from the Almighty. What awful events have been crowded into the year that is just ended! How have our ears tingled with the tidings which from time to time have reached us! What think you of that dreadful hurricane, which lately swept our West India Colonies as with the besom of destruction? Can language describe, or heart conceive, the terrific grandeur of that scene, when God commanded the stormy wind to fulfil his word, and torrents of wrath were poured on the devoted islands in every direction! Terror and dismay sat on every countenance. Every one feared to be alone, yet no one dared to seek his fellow. Each thought his own place, a place of danger: but a place of safety, none knew where to find.-And oh, what devastation was seen, when the storm had spent its fury! The land was as the Garden of Eden before it, and behind it a desolate wilderness. In one principal island, Barbadoes, nearly every dwelling was levelled with the ground, and scarcely a church or chapel left, that was not in a state of ruin! tremendous too was the loss of lives; not less than four thousand persons perished! and the destruction of property was beyond calculation! * Nor can you have forgotten that heart-rending event, the Wreck of the Rothsay Castle, on the coast of Anglesey, when the shore was literally strewed with the dead! In that fatal night numbers perished, upon whom the sun had shone brightly in the morning, and whose hearts had danced with delight at the prospect of to-morrow's joy. Oh, boast not thyself of to-morrow!— Then too perished some, who were precious to good men, and precious to God; some who could be ill spared by their country, whose effectual fervent prayer is now wanted to stay the arm of the destroying Angel, and prevail with the Almighty to spare, our guilty land for the few righteous' sake!-but they were, in mercy to themselves, taken from the evil to come: they were lovely in their lives and in their death they were not divided: and that foaming billow, which swept them from the deck, wafted them to the haven where they would be, the bosom of their Saviour and their God! And when we turn our eye to what is passing at home, amongst ourselves, is there not cause for dismay? What is this complaining in our streets, this stagnation of trade, this cry of our * Mr. and Mrs. Foster, manufacturers, this general dissatisfaction and discontent! Have not fierce tumults and insurrections burst forth in various quarters of the kingdom, that could be quelled only by the shedding of blood? Have not the castles of our nobles been stormed by infuriated mobs, and one of our most ancient cities given up for a while to riot, plunder, and the flames! Fires kindled by mad and ferocious incendiaries have blazed night after night the benevolence of the owner we have seen, has been no protection to property. These infatuated men indiscriminately burn the precious fruits of the earth, and complaining of want, in very wantonness destroy the staff of life. Nay, we have lived to witness worse things than even these. There are some in this our day so lost to every feeling of common humanity, as to destroy life itself, in order to make a traffic of the lifeless body-for a few paltry pounds, committing murder in a manner so horrible and unheard of, as to require a new name to describe. its unparalleled guilt. Meanwhile the Cholera, that manifest scourge in the hand of the Almighty, that pestilence, for which no sure preventive nor certain cure has been discovered, which has slain its thousands and its tens of thousands on the Continent, has at length found its way to our borders; and, though slow in its progress at present, through the forbearing mercy of God, yet, it threatens to spread its destructive influence far and wide, and, but for divine interposition, may make of healthy ENGLAND, what LONDON was in the Plague, one vast charnel-house. Nor are all the sources of our fear yet summed up. Our Protestant Establishment in Church and State, that goodly fabric beneath whose shadow we have enjoyed so many and so great blessings, is now so fiercely assaulted on every side, by Papists, by Socinians, by Infidels -nay, by some unkind brethren of the Dissenting connection (of whom we had hoped better things)-who, though they agree not in almost any other point, can heartily unite in this, to pull down that Church, which the Reformers reared, and for which the martyrs bled. And while there are these fightings without, we are not, alas, without distressing fears within. No longer prevails that brotherly love, that sweet communion among the followers of the Lamb: divisions, delusions, heresies have succeeded to it every one now hath, as it were, a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation: brother striveth with brother-believers contend now, not, as aforetime, for the faith once delivered to the Saints-but each to maintain his own Shibboleth, his own private interpretation of the Word of God: Such is the distracted state of our church and nation-most painful-but most true-and I repeat, they must be blind, and deaf, and dull indeed, who do not consider the present a season of unusual danger. Look where we will, things wear a louring aspect. Our sky is black with clouds. Judgments seem, yea more than seem, to be hovering all around us. How soon they may fall and overwhelm us, God only knows! Ŏ ENGLAND, ENGLAND, ENGLAND, "HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD!" If God indeed were for us, we might trust and not be afraid. We might look danger in the face, and boldly say, Who shall harm us?--But is this the case? Are we a people fearing God and working righteousness? Is there reason to believe, that in the Holy One of Israel is our defence? Are we not on the contrary, a sinful generation, a people laden with iniquity? Is there not abundant room to fear, lest God should say in terrible indignation, "They are joined to idols; let them alone!" If a twelvemonth ago it were needful to blow the trumpet in Zion, how much more needful now to sound an alarm in his holy mountain,-to bid the inhabitants of the land tremble before God -and beseech them, if a Public National Fast be not granted, to fast and mourn and weep in private for the nation's sins. Shall I notice one or two of the prevailing sins of the present time, which cannot fail to provoke the jealousy of the Lord of Hosts? Were I to recount them all, it would be a dark and dismal catalogue indeed! What an inestimable privilege for instance is the Christian Sabbath! It is a pledge of God's distinguishing love. It is a type of heaven. It |