kingdom receives, recoils on ourselves, and it cannot fall without involving us in its ruins.

The fourth minister of the God of vengeance, which calls for consideration, is the spirit of slumber. It would seem that God had designated our own hands to be our own ruin. It would seem that he had given a demon from the depths of hell a commission like that granted to the spirit mentioned in the first book of Kings. The Lord said, who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead? And there came forth a spirit, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said, yea, thou shalt persuade him, and prevail. xxii. 20, 22. Yea, a spirit who has sworn the overthrow of our families, the ruin of our arts and manufactures, the destruction of our commerce, and the loss of our credit, this spirit has fascinated us all. He seizes the great and the small, the court, and the city. But I abridge my intentions on this subject; I yield to the reasons which forbid my extending to farther detail. To feel the strokes of God's hand, is therefore the first duty he requires. Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.

II. This rod requires us, secondly, to trace the causes and the origin of our calamities. Micah wished the Jews to comprehend that the miseries under which they groaned were a consequence of their crimes. We would wish you to form the same judgment of yours. But here the subject has its difficulties. Under a pretence of entering into the spirit of humiliation, there is danger of our falling into the puerilities of superstition. Few subjects are more fertile in er

Temporal

roneous conclusions than this subject. prosperity and adversity are very equivocal marks of the favour and displeasure of God. If some men are so wilfully blind as not to see that a particular dispensation of Providence is productive of certain punishments, there are others who fancy that they every where see a particular providence. The commonest occurrences, however closely connected with second causes, seem to them the result of an extraordinary counsel in him who holds the helm of the world. The slightest adversity, they regard as a stroke of his angry arm. Generally speaking, we should always recollect that the conduct of Providence is involved in clouds and darkness. We should form the criterion of our guilt or innocence, not by the exterior prosperity or adversity sent of God, but by our obedience or disobedience to his word: and we should habituate ourselves to see without surprise in this world, the wicked prosperous, and the righteous afflicted.

But notwithstanding the obscurity in which it has pleased God to involve his ways, there are cases, in which we cannot without impiety refuse assent, that adversity is occasioned by crimes. It is peculiarly apparent in two cases: first, when there is a natural connection between the crimes we have committed, and the calamities we suffer: the second is, when great calamities follow the perpetration of enormous crimes. Let us explain.

First, we cannot doubt that punishment is a consequence of crime, when there is an essential tie between the crime we have committed, and the calamity we suffer. One of the finest proofs of the holi

VOL. VIII.

10

ness of the God, to whom all creatures owe their preservation and being, is derived from the harmony he has placed between happiness and virtue. Trace this harmony in the circles of society, and in private life. 1. In private life. An enlightened mind can find no solid happiness but in the exercise of virtue. The passions may indeed excite a transient satisfaction; but a state of violence cannot be permanent. Each passion offers violence to some faculty of the soul, to which that faculty is abandoned. The happiness procured by the passions, is founded on mistake the moment the soul recovers recollection, the happiness occasioned by error is dissipated. The happiness ascribed to avarice is grounded on the same mistake it is couched in this principle, that gold and silver are the true riches: and the moment that the soul which established its happiness on a false princi ple becomes enlightened; the moment it investigates the numerous cases in which riches are not only useless, but destructive, it loses the happiness founded on mistake. We may reason in the same manner concerning the other passions. There is then in the soul of every man a harmony between happiness and virtue, misery and crime.

2. This harmony is equally found in the great circles of national society. I am not wholly unacquainted with the maxims which a false polity would advance on the subject. I am not ignorant of what Hobbes, Machiavel, and their disciples, ancient and modern, have said. And I frankly confess that I feel the force of the difficulties opposed to this general theses, of the happiness of nations being inseparable

from their innocence. But notwithstanding all the difficulties of which the theses is susceptible, I think myself able to maintain, and prove, that all public happiness founded on crime, is like the happiness of the individual just described. It is a state of violence, which cannot be permanent. From the source of those same vices, on which a criminal polity would found the happiness of the state, proceeds a long train of calamities which are evidently productive of total ruin.

Without encumbering ourselves with these discussions, without reviving this controversy, the better to keep in view the grand objects of the day, I affirm, that the calamities under which we groan are the necessary consequence of our crimes and in such sort, that though there were no God of vengeance who holds the helm of the universe; no judge ready to execute justice, our degeneracy into every vice would suffice to involve our country in misery.

Under what evils do we now groan? Is it because our name is less respected? Is it because our credit is less established? Is it because our armies are less formidable? Is it because our union is less compact? But whence do these calamities proceed? Are they the mysteries of a God, who hideth himself? Are they strokes inflicted by an invisible hand? Or are they the natural effects and consequences of our crimes? Does it require miracles to produce them? If so, miracles would be requisite to prevent them. Men of genius, profound statesmen, you who send us to our books, and to the dust of our closets, when we talk of providence, and of plagues inflicted by an avenging

God, I summons your speculation and superior information to this one point; our destruction is of ourselves and the Judge of the universe has no need to punish our crimes but by our crimes.

I have said in the second place, that great calamities following great crimes, ought to be regarded as their punishment. And shall we refuse in this day of humiliation, ascribing to this awful cause the strokes with which we are afflicted? Cast your eyes for a moment on the nature of the crimes which reproach these provinces. All nations have their vices, and vices in which they resemble one another; all nations afford the justest cause for reprehension. Read the various books of morality; consult the sermons delivered among the most enlightened nations, and you will every where see that the great are proud; the poor impatient, the aged covetous, the young voluptuous, and so of every class. Meanwhile all sorts of vice have not a resemblance. Weigh a passage in Deuteronomy in which you will find a distinction between sin and sin, and a distinction worthy of peculiar regard. Their spot, says Moses, is not the spot of the children of God. xxxii. 5. There is then a spot of the children of God, and a spot which is not of his children. There are infirmities found among a people dear to God, and there are defects incompatible with his people. To receive the sacrament of the eucharist, but not with all the veneration required by so august a mystery; to celebrate days of humiliation, but not with all the deep repentance we should bring to these solemnities; these are great spots; but they are spots common to the children of God. To fall, however,