"I.-MORAL CAUSES OF PESTILENCE. "With regard to the physical causes of this malady, no ains have been spared to discover them. Physicians of acknowledged ability and extensive experience have been employed in conducting the requisite enquiries, in various \ountries. Yet nothing better than shrewd guesses and plausible conjectures have yet been afforded. Whether the disease is received by communication with those who are infected, or from currents of air flowing from places where it prevails, or through some other channel that has hitherto eluded detection, is a question to which no perfectly satisfactory answer has yet been given. With regard, however, to the morul causes, we encounter no insuperable difficulties, in any investigation we may pursue. This is

a topic on which the light of revelation shines with unclouded clearness, and to which our minds are attracted with pleasure, by the certainty with which they can receive the conclusions, at which they arrive.

"1. We should acknowledge God as the immediate author of Pestilence. In no part of his dominions can any evil take place, without his immediate concurrence granted according to his eternal decree. To refer any thing to chance is to erect, in his room, a mere idol which fancy has fabricated-to assign an atheistic principle, of which no one has ever given an intelligible account. It is to depose him from the government of the universe he has made to divest him of a power he necessarily holds over his creatures, and to substitute in his stead an imaginary cause still more absurd than even fatalism itself. But no truth rests on a firmer foundation, than that, all events happen, agreeably to his eternal purpose, under his actual superintendance. Ever those unexpected occurrences that we are accustomed to term accidental, and of which we cannot discover the proximate causes, must be traced to this primary Source, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. Now, why should we allow ourselves to forget, that physical suffering obeys the same law. Whatever form it assumes, according to the propensities, habits and circumstances of the individuals on whom it descends-whether it forms the salutary discipline by which true believers are trained for future bliss, or the suitable punishment with which ungodly men are visited for their iniquities, it can never be traced to any source inferior to the constant agency of the Supreme

Ruler. 'Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.'-Job v. 6. 'Shall there be evil (that is, the natural evils of famine, sword, or pestilence) in a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Amos iii. 6.

"Nor has pestilence come from God, through a long series of intermediate causes. It is a calamity almost immediately from his hand. There are many other calamities which are brought upon the country by the agency of men, the guilty instruments. They are the authors of those disgraceful riots which injure property, trade, credit, social order, and domestic peace. They are the authors of those frequent burnings by which so much wholesome produce is consumed, and so much useful machinery is destroyed, in different parts of the land. And they have been the authors of those unnecessary wars which have sacrificed so many lives, squandered so much capital, and involved so many thousands of industrious citizens in distress, from which they might have been saved, had the arts of peace been more carefully cultivated. But not from them has proceeded the scourge now under conside ration. No foreign enemy has landed on our shores with the hostile design of introducing this malady; nor, among all the vagaries that have been dreamed, has its origin ever been imputed to the malignity of any domestic foe. Looking at it in its different bearings, we are constrained to view it as an immediate effect of divine interference.

"How much, then, is it to be lamented, that such reluctance should be manifested, to acknowledge God in this awful visitation! Multitudes there are, who never lift their minds above the operation of second causes, or rather above the inexplicable difficulties which have hitherto attended all enquiries into these causes. You may read many an ingenious paper in medical publications, and you may hear many an instructive address at public meetings, without being ever reminded, that God has had any concern in bringing this calamity on the country. He raises his voice in the storm; but they will not hear it : he displays his arm in the chastisement; but they will not see it. When they have traced this to communication with infected places on the Continent, or to currents of air blowing from the opposite coast, or to vitiated food received by the poorer classes from whom it usually seLects its victims, they imagine they have gone far enough

in accounting for its origin. But, should they not remember who it is, that converts food into the medium of injury to the human frame-who it is, that makes the sea the channel of those evils that come from foreign climes-who it is, that sends forth out of his treasuries,' those atmospheric currents that sweep over the bosom of the ocean, charged with the elements of disease, desolation, and death? Should they not remember, that the winds and the waves are his swift messengers in carrying the tokens of his anger as well as the fruits of his bounty,-that the intercourse of nations is a means of righteous vengeance as well as a source of profitable commerce-and that the finest produce of the earth, used in an improper way, may be productive of the worst distempers, as well as of the most wholesome nutriment? And, should not they allow themselves to think, that the very mysteriousness which hangs over the proximate causes of this malady, and which all the enquiries instituted have failed to remove, may be designed, as it is certainly calculated, to elevate their minds the more readily to God, of whose existence they are so averse to cherish the grateful remembrance, and of whose agency they are so apt to refuse the pious recognition ?

"2. We should confess sin as the proouring cause of Pestilence. It is not denied, that certain circumstances in the physical condition of a people tend to generate this disorder. A deficiency of food, a want of cleanliness, addiction to drunkenness from the use of any intoxicating liquors whatever, and living in an impure atmosphere in which noxious effluvia are continually floating, must be allowed to render the body more susceptible of it, than it would be in circumstances of an opposite description. But, surely, no one believing in the immutable obligations of morality, will refuse, that moral evil has an influence in bringing down from heaven this terrible malady.

"In proof of this it must be remarked, that the particular pestilences specified in the Bible are ascribed to the eriminality of the party upon whom they were denounced. Look to Leviticus xxvi. 21, 25. "I will bring seven times more plagues upon you, according to your sins. If ye will not be reformed by me, by these things, but will walk contrary unto me, I will punish you yet seven times for your sins. And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant; and when you are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pesti

lence among you.' Look to Deut. xxviii. 15–21. 'It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes—the Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee, until he have consumed thee from off the land.' Look, for a third quotation not less striking, to Jeremiah xxix. 17-19. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Behold, I will send upon them, the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten. And I will persecute them with the sword, with the famine, and with the pestilence, and will deliver them to be removed to all the kingdoms of the earth, because they have not hearkened to my words which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets.

"II. MORAL OBJECTS OF PESTILENCE.

"Of the moral objects which pestilence is calculated, under the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit, to promote, I would illustrate the following:

"1. An impressive manifestation of the Divine Perfections. Of these we meet with many striking displays in the great system of nature, which it were inexcusable indolence to overlook. But, owing to a well-known principle in our constitution, it always happens, that the uniform course of nature, when it has become familiar to our minds, ceases to impress us with that deep sense of the divine character which some novel developement would awaken.

"Now, any unusual calamity is fitted more powerfully to arrest our attention. Such a calamity may be very trifling, compared with the regular succession of events produced by the Deity, with unwearied energy, in numberless worlds. It may bear the same relation to the immense system of the divine administration, that an atom bears to the sun, or a drop to the ocean. Yet, being out of the ordinary course of things, it produces a far deeper impression.

"Upon this plain principle, this unusual visitation is calculated to fix in our minds deep impressions of his infinite attributes. It sets before us his justice-that justice which awards, to nations living on the earth, judgments proportionate to the enormity, aggravation, and number of the sins they have committed. It sets before us his veracity that veracity which was pledged in numerous threatenings of pestilence on guilty communities, and which demands that these be carried into effect, according to the

irreversible determinations from which they have proceeded. It sets before us his power-that power which controls the air as the channel through which the malady passes, which baffles the repeated efforts of human skill to arrest its progress, which lays prostrate in an instant the healthiest individuals on whom it fixes, and which, in consigning thousands to their graves, buries along with them the hopes and the fears, the speculations and the projects that had filled their minds. It sets before us his sovereigntythat sovereignty which has determined the course which the malady shall take, according to his absolute will which, passing over some towns in unmerited mercy, descends upon others in awful vengeance-and which, sparing the lives of some, takes away those of others, agreeably to wise reasons hid in the divine bosom by a thick veil which the eyes of the most penetrating minds have not yet pierced. In short, it brings him peculiarly near to us, in his judicial character and while he is present every-where by boundless knowledge and irresistible activity, he is eminently present in this land at the present instant, by a severe judgment, in which we should read his character with profound reverence, and hear his voice with implicit readiness.

"2. Pestilence is fitted to co-operate with other means in reclaiming the nation from prevailing immoralities. I am aware, these other means are the most important for securing this desirable end. It is education improving their intellectual powers, and cultivating their moral principles-it is instruction shewing them the duties required from them in their respective relations, the motives by which they should be governed, and the interests to which they should aspire-above all, it is religion withdrawing their minds from the dominion. of irregular propensities, uniting them to God by indissoluble ties, and directing them to heaven, the abode of eternal blis these are the best means, because adapted to their spiritual nature, for ameliorating their moral condition. But judgments are valuable auxiliaries. By exhibiting the malignity of sin which has occasioned them, and the retributive justice of God from which they flow, they rouse the nation to genuine penitence, to the immediate renunciation of evil practices, which have brought down the divine wrath, and to the diligent cultivation of those Christian virtues to which has been annexed the promise of divine favour.

"For an example, look to the Israelites. For a very long period, prior to the crucifixion of our Lord when they