fate. The great and the good, the prince and the peasant, the renowned and the obscure, travel alike the road which leads to the grave. At the moment when you expire, thousands throughout the world shall together with you be yielding up their breath. Can that be held a great calamity which is common to you with every thing that lives on earth; which is an event as much according to the course of nature as it is that leaves should fall in autumn, or that fruit should drop from the tree when it is fully ripe?

The pain of death cannot be very long, and is probably less severe than what you have at other times experienced. The pomp of death is more terrifying than death itself. It is to the weakness of imagination that it owes its chief power of dejecting your spirits; for when the force of the mind is roused, there is almost no passion in our nature but what has showed itself able to overcome the fear of death. Honour has defied death; love has despised it; shame has rushed upon it; revenge has disregarded it; grief a thousand times has wished for its approach. Is it not strange that reason and virtue cannot give you strength to surmount that fear, which, even in feeble minds, so many passions have conquered? What inconsistency is there in complaining so much of the evils of life, and being at the same time so afraid of what is to terminate them all! Who can tell whether his future life might not teem with disasters and miseries, as yet unknown, were it-to be prolonged according to his wish! At any rate, is it desirable to draw life out to the last dregs, and to wait till old age pour upon you

You

its whole store of diseases and sorrows? lament that you are to die ; but, did you view your situation properly, you would have much greater cause to lament if you were chained to this life for two or three hundred years, without possibility of release. Expect, therefore, calmy that which is natural in itself, and which must be fit, because it is the appointment of Heaven. Perform your duty as a good subject to the Deity, during the time allotted you; and rejoice that a period is fixed for your dismission from the present warfare. Remember that a slavish dread of death destroys all the comfort of that life which you seek to preserve. Better to undergo the stroke of death at once, than to live in perpetual misery from the fear of dying.

BLAIR.

ON A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. IN asserting then our belief in a particular Providence we maintain that, wherever we are, there is the Almighty with us, surrounding us with his boundless presence, including and penetrating every part of our substance, and searching the most secret recesses of our heart with his unerring eye; foreseeing, through an infinite series of causes, the things that ever shall be, as though they now are; ordaining events apparently the most casual and fortuitous, and directing every contingency in human affairs. No circumstance too small, no accident too trifling for his omniscience to foresee, or for his omnipotence to control; but all conspiring to form a part in

his incomprehensible scheme of universal government. Now that the Almighty regards events as they pass, inasmuch as they are not hid from his general view, he who disbelieves in a particular Providence, will not deny: but if he regards them only as a spectator, and not as director, he regards them not as a moral governor, he regards them in a manner unworthy of the Deity. But here the objection lies; shall the great God, whose habitation is in seats of endless bliss, condescend to look down upon this frail and miserable world, to watch the appetites, to govern the passions of every sinful creature, and to direct the course of every fortuitous event in human life? Shall we reason thus of the Almighty, of that great Being whose presence necessarily pervades every particle of created matter? Where is the spot in this lower world on which his eye is not fixed, where is that space into which his presence is not infused? Is there a thought in our hearts which he has not "understood long before?" As then he is omnipresent, what event can have escaped his sight; as he is omniscient, what contingency can have escaped his preknowledge? As he is a moral governor, for his moral government in some sort no one can deny, will he not necessarily direct every event to the furtherance and support of that administration? Do we suppose that the government of God is conducted on the same principles, and in the same manner, as the government of man? In all human affairs events arise in contradiction to the preconceived ends even of the wisest governors; they arise in no order of connexion, often without

any apparent cause, and still oftener in opposition to probable expectation; and fortunate is he who can either apply the event to his preconceived purpose, or alter his purpose to suit the unexpected event. Can we in reason conceive that the supreme government of the universe is open to all these frustrations of purpose, or that the Almighty is a slave to contingencies and casual issue? If not, if according to our notions of the Divine attributes, such uncertainty and confusion are inconsistent with the Divine government of the universe; then must we suppose a perfect scheme and constitution of things to exist, with which every event is inseparably connected; in which every circumstance, however trifling, bears its part as a furtherance of the grand and incomprehensible end of the whole : incomprehensible to all but that great Being who directs, controls, and governs every part at the same instant; who can reduce contingency to method, and instability and chance to unfailing rule and order. There are those who would be willing enough to allow that all the more important events of the world are under the government and direction of God, but consider it below his majesty to condescend to all the trifling events of the life of man: to number the hairs of our head. Now, in addition to what I have said before, I would ask what line of distinction could the ingenuity of man devise between small events and great, which are, and which are not, under the cognizance of the Almighty? Between perfection and imperfection there is no medium nor degree. If there is one event or one contingency

which defeats the design of the Almighty, and supplies not its link in the chain of order, then is the system and constitution of the whole imperfect, and unworthy the administration of a perfect Being. Since, therefore, it is necessary for the completion of a perfect system, that every part should be perfect, and supply the place allotted to it in reference to the order and design of the whole; it follows that every event in the universe must be under the direction of its moral Governor, who alone can so dispose them as, out of the seeming irregularity and confusion of all things here below, to produce that harmony and order which are the essential attributes of the nature and government of God. No consideration arising from the permission of evil, or the free will of man, can militate against this; as we have seen the one in innumerable instances the minister of God's unsearchable purposes; and the other, with all the difficulties attending its reconcilement with the foreknowledge of God, is essential to moral government; which cannot exist without previously supposing the existence of free moral agents. The necessity of reconciling these two apparently opposite qualities of prescience in the Almighty and free will in man, has exercised the ingenuity of man in proposing solutions of the difficulty. Perhaps the humility rather than the ingenuity of man would return the best answer to this intricate point, by confessing it one of the innumerable questions which are above the power of the human mind to answer or explain. "Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for us, we cannot attain unto it!"