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Titles and honors are among its rewards, and thrones at its disposal. Among its counsellors are kings, and many of the great and mighty of the earth are enrolled among its subjects. Where are the waters not ploughed by its navies? What imperial element is not yoked to its car? Philosophy itself has become a mercenary in its pay; and science, a votary at its shrine, brings all its noblest discoveries, as offerings, to its feet. What part of the globe's surface is not rapidly yielding up its last stores of hidden treasure to the spirit of gain or retains more than a few miles of unexplored and unvanquished territory? Scorning the childish dream of the philosopher's stone, it aspires to turn the globe itself into gold!

HARRIS.

INFATUATION OF MANKIND, WITH REGARD TO THE THINGS OF TIME.

But if no danger is to be apprehended, while the thunder of heaven rolls at a distance, believe me, when it collects over our heads, we may be fatally convinced, that a well-spent life is the only conductor that can avert the bolt. Let us reflect, that time waits for no man. Sleeping or waking, our days are on the wing. If we look to those that are past, they are but as a point. When I compare the present aspect of this city, with that which it exhibited within the short space of my own residence, what does the result present, but the most melancholy proof of human instability? New characters in every scene, new events, new principles, new passions, a new creation insensibly arisen from the ashes of the old; which side soever I look, the ravage of death has nearly renovated all. Scarcely do we look around us in life, when our children are matured, and remind us of the grave; the great feature of all nature, is rapidity of growth and declension. Ages are renewed, but the figure of the world passeth away. God only remains the same. The torrent that sweeps by, runs at the base of his immutability; he sees, with indignation, wretched mortals, as they pass along, insulting him by

the visionary hope of sharing that attribute, which belongs to HIM alone.

Study the matter of the
Scarce is it erected-

It is to the incomprehensible oblivion of our mortality, that the world owes all its fascination. Observe for what man toils. Observe what it often costs him to become rich and great― dismal vicissitudes of hope and disappointment—often all that can degrade the dignity of his nature, and offend his God! pedestal, and the instability of the statue. scarce presented to the stare of the multitude-when death, starting like a massy fragment from the summit of a mountain, dashes the proud colossus into dust! Where then, is the promised fruit of all his toil? Where the wretched and deluded being, who fondly promised himself that he had laid up much goods for many years? Gone, my brethren, to his account, a naked victim, trembling in the hands of the living God! Yes, my brethren, the final catastrophe of all human passions, is rapid as it is awful. Fancy yourselves on that bed from which you never shall arise, and the reflection will exhibit, like a true and faithful mirror, what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue. Happy they who meet that great, inevitable transition, full of days! Unhappy they who meet it but to tremble and despair! Then it is that man learns wisdom, when too late; then it is that everything will forsake him, but his virtues or his crimes. To him the world is past; dignities, honors, pleasure, glory; past like the cloud of the morning! nor could all that the great globe inherits afford him, at that tremendous hour, as much consolation, as the recollection of having given but one cup of cold water to a child of wretchedness, in the name of Christ Jesus!

KIRWAN.

THE HORRORS OF WAR.

REAL war, my friends, is a very different thing from that painted image of it, which you see on a parade, or at a review; it is the most awful scourge that Providence employs for the chastisement of man. It is the garment of vengeance with which the Deity

arrays himself, when he comes forth to punish the inhabitants of

the earth.

Though we must all die, as the woman of Tekoa said, and are as water spilt upon the ground which cannot be gathered up, yet it is impossible for a humane mind to contemplate the rapid extinction of innumerable lives without concern. To perish in a moment, to be hurried instantaneously, without warning, into the presence of the Supreme Judge, has something in it inexpressibly awful and affecting. Since the commencement of those hostilities which are now so happily closed, it may be reasonably conjectured that not less than half-a-million of our fellow-creatures have fallen a sacrifice. Half-a-million of beings, sharers of the same nature, warmed with the same hopes, and as fondly attached to life as ourselves, have been prematurely swept into the grave; each of whose deaths has pierced the heart of a wife, a parent, a brother, or a sister. How many of these scenes of complicated distress have occurred since the commencement of hostilities, is known only to Omniscience: that they are innumerable cannot admit of a doubt. In some parts of Europe, perhaps there is scarcely a family exempt.

In war, death reigns without a rival and without control. War is the work, the element, or rather the sport and triumph of death, who glories, not only in the extent of his conquest, but in the richness of his spoil. In the other methods of attack, in the other forms which death assumes, the feeble and the aged, who at the best can live but a short time, are usually the victims; here it is the vigorous and the strong.

To confine our attention to the number of those who are slain in battle, would give but a very inadequate idea of the ravages of the sword. The lot of those who perish instantaneously, may be considered, apart from religious prospects, as comparatively happy, since they are exempt from those lingering diseases, and slow torments, to which others are liable. We cannot see an individual expire, though a stranger and an enemy, without being sensibly moved, and prompted by compassion to lend him every assistance in our power. Every trace of resentment vanishes in a moment; every other emotion gives way to pity and terror.

In these last extremities, we remember nothing but the respect and tenderness due to our common nature. What a scene then must a field of battle present, where thousands are left without assistance, and without pity, with their wounds exposed to the piercing air, while the blood, freezing as it flows, binds them to the earth, amidst the trampling of horses, and the insults of an enraged foe!

But we have hitherto only adverted to the sufferings of those who are engaged in the profession of arms, without taking into our account the situation of the countries which are the scene of hostilities. How dreadful to hold everything at the mercy of an enemy, and to receive life itself as a boon dependent on the sword. How boundless the fears which such a situation must inspire, where the issues of life and death are determined by no known laws, principles, or customs, and no conjecture can be formed of our destiny, except as far as it is dimly deciphered in characters of blood, in the dictates of revenge, and the caprices of power.

Conceive but for a moment the consternation which the approach of an invading army would impress on the peaceful villages in this neighborhood. When you have placed yourselves for an instant in that situation, you will learn to sympathise with those unhappy countries which have sustained the ravages of arms.

But how is it possible to give you an idea of these horrors? Here you behold rich harvests, the bounty of heaven, and the reward of industry, consumed in a moment, or trampled under foot, while famine and pestilence follow the steps of desolation. There the cottages of peasants given up to the flames, mothers expiring through fear, not for themselves, but their infants; the inhabitants flying with their helpless babes in all directions-miserable fugitives on their native soil!

In another part you witness opulent cities taken by storm; the streets, where no sounds were heard but those of peaceful industry, filled on a sudden with slaughter and blood, resounding with the cries of the pursuing and the pursued; the palaces of nobles demolished, the houses of the rich pillaged, the chastity of virgins and matrons violated, and every age, sex, and rank, mingled in promiscuous massacre and ruin.

HALL.

INSIGNIFICANCE OF THIS WORLD.

THOUGH the earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it, were extinguished for ever—an event, so awful to us and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness - What is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty? Though the earth and the heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them; and the sky which mantles them, is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighborhood flourish there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that there piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers?

And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them; and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendor and variety by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the stream of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time, the life, which we know by the microscope it teems with, is extinguished; and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, and on the scale of his observation, carries in it to the myriads which people this little leaf, an event as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a world. Now, on the grand scale of the universe, we, the occupiers

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