to the sun itself with a deeper, though deluded, reverence?

And when you shall look in heaven upon angelic "ministers of grace," or on some dear object of whom you are now bereft, or whom you loved in untold sadness because the sentiment could not be expressed, or could not be mutual; when you shall find all excellencies, real or ideal, which you had conceived in creatures, verified and far transcended, and every pure and blameless ardour shall awake in the intimate society of those whom Jehovah has caused to reflect perfectly his glorious image,—will the beatific and adoring vision of the "Sun of righteousness” be by such objects or feelings suspended? and although it should be less constantly direct or exclusive, will it not, by these alternations, acquire at one season a milder loveliness, at another a sublimer majesty? When you shall thus associate with perfect creatures, it is true you will, so far, admire and love the "shadows of that glorious essence with whom there is no shadow of change.' "'* It will be in some sense but a "bright cloud" of heavenly "witnesses" which shall encompass you; but in its "myriads of diffusive dyes" you will venerate that plastic allpervading brightness, which can give even to the cloud an ever-during beauty, varying yet indissoluble.

Be consoled then under the vanished hopes, the *"Shaw's Angelical Life," p. 377. in the "Mourner's Companion."

K

unfulfilled wishes and repeated wounds, which you have suffered and may yet endure. "The hour cometh" when, without any infringement of supreme devotedness to the Author of all good, you shall give to glorified creatures a love alike pure and fervent; mediately to them but ultimately to Him; feeling that all their moral and material beauty is in itself derivative but in Him unchanging; in them also destined to be permanent, because it is his will and promise that it shall not decay. Anticipate the unreserved endearment, the perfect love of heaven, as means by which the God of grace will manifest his beneficence and glory. "Remember how short the time is," ere the dejection of a lonely heart may be exchanged for the full sunshine of blessedness, and all that living and love-breathing imagery, which shall reflect and variegate its beams. Till then, may "the Lord direct your heart into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ."

IX.

ON ADVERSITIES IN PECUNIARY

CIRCUMSTANCES.

NOTWITHSTANDING a great number of distressing facts which wear the contrary aspect, it is soothing to conclude on the whole, that the order of Divine Providence, and the progress of human affairs under that hidden administration, are lessening from age to age the general sum of violent and extreme adversity.

The civilization and science, the public spirit and prudential foresight, which have grown with the growth of enlightened Christianity, form a sort of lower parallel, in temporal benefits, to the sublimer blessings which the gospel has diffused; so that its complex influence is seen to have abated the insecurities and terrors of " the life that now is," as well as those, more momentous, of "that which is to come."

There is in this concurrence an obvious fitness and harmony. It yields a kind of collateral pledge for the loftier promises of that "godliness," which " is profitable unto all things." There would have been some discordancy, had a religion which predicts, even for this world, an era of glorious peace and blessedness, rendered meantime the social and individual state of man more and more calamitous on the whole.

It is well, therefore, to recollect, with gratitude and hope, how far that is from being the fact. In what may be specially termed the ages and domains of Christian civilization, those dreadful visitations of disease have become less multiplied and less destructive, which, by striking most awfully at human life," shake terribly" the whole social fabric: and although a grievous scourge of this kind has recently filled many parts of our land with mourning and others with dismay, yet I trust we may regard its desolations as actually far less wide, and its speedy recurrence or long duration as far less probable, than they would, by the unchecked operation of natural causes, have been at remote periods. In the fourteenth century, and in each of the four successive reigns of Elizabeth, James, and the first and second Charles, this island was ravaged by pestilences which, in the extent of their depopulating havoc, were greatly more terrific.

The horrors also of famine, which in the firstnamed century were dreadfully experienced in England, have been rendered much less an object of dread, not only by a better regulated industry, but by the resources of a vastly extended intercourse with distant nations.

It should, doubtless, be much more solemnly and submissively remembered than it is, in reference to both, that we are ever, and most absolutely, "in the hand of" Him, who could give to "his sword" the pestilence, a quite unsparing commission, or inflict, on every region, simultaneous and protracted barrenness. But we do not omit to feel and acknowledge that " very great are His mercies," when we attribute, instrumentally, the rareness and mitigations of those dire distresses, to such advancements in society as have attended on His higher gift ;-themselves, therefore, equally ordinations of His undeserved goodness;-yet the natural and happy effects of which, He could, at any moment, and in any measure, frustrate.

In the same order of concomitance with Christian civilization, have massacre and rapine become less prevalent in war; feuds, assassinations, and outrages, more rare in times of national peace; pillage and palpable extortion have been checked by settled laws; conflagrations have grown less frequent and incontrollable: and against the effects of these,