the blow fell upon them which swept them into eternity. And it has happened, as was to be expected, that persons have been found, whose limited, but presumptuous views of God's dealings with mankind, have chilled those warmer sympathies of the heart, which so dreadful an event is calculated to excite; and they have spoken of it, as the just judgment of God upon the instruments and abettors of sin. Yea, they

8

say, the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate; and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery. Such reflexions are unbecoming the disciples of that Master, who said, Judge not, that ye be not judged; and surely come under the ban of that rebuke, which he uttered once and for ever against the uncharitable interpreters of God's righteous decrees; Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

To acknowledge the working of an all-wise and merciful Providence in every thing which happens, is indeed the delight, as it is the duty, of the truly religious man: but to pretend to read a judicial sentence of approval or condemnation, in every prosperous or adverse dispensation

8 Job xv. 34.

which befalls those around us, is the part of a bold and uncharitable fanaticism, which rushes in where angels fear to tread, ascends the everlasting seat of judgment, and presumes to invest the anathema maranatha of human prejudice and passion with the authority of a divine decree.

Respecting the lawfulness, or unlawfulness of theatrical amusements, in a religious point of view, I am not about to deliver an opinion. Were I asked whether I think them conducive to the ends of piety and morality, I should know what to answer; although to questions, which relate to actions not expressly permitted or forbidden in the Word of God, it is no easy matter so to answer as to satisfy inquirers, who will think us needlessly and unreasonably rigid, if we answer one way; and pretend that we approve of all their excesses and abuse of recreation, if we answer the other way. But one thing I may and will say; that the pursuit of pleasure is a crying sin of the age in which we live; that Christian seriousness and self-denial must be far more commonly and consistently practised than they are, before there will be any reason to fear the ill effects, which may be expected to result from the general prevalence of an affected austerity; that we can much better spare some

of the most fashionable amusements of the day, than we can dispense with a single help to piety and devotion, a single restraint upon immorality.

But even were we to concede, that the amusements, to which I have alluded, are in themselves sinful and offensive to God, I still contend, that we are acting uncharitably and unwarrantably, if we presume to speak of this dreadful event, as a manifestation of the divine displeasure. Let him, who ventures to pronounce such a sentence, consider the inconsistencies in which he will involve himself. What will he say of the volcano, or the earthquake, or the inundation, which destroy, with unsparing and indiscriminate fury, not only the theatre and its votaries, but the church, the hospital, and the school? But, in fact, every sudden calamity, which befalls a pious individual, is a practical refutation of such uncharitable censures; still more the wide-wasting pestilence, the sudden shipwreck, the undistinguishing massacre. As, in the ordinary movements of God's providence, the rain of his bounty descends upon the just and the unjust, so the evils of this imperfect and temporary system are permitted to fall alike, though not with the same final results, upon the children and the enemies of the Most High. Away, then, with that short-sighted and mistaken

piety, which demands, with the false friends of Job, Who ever perished, being innocent? where were the righteous cut off?"

or

What, then, is no improvement to be made, by the religious man, of such a fearful catastrophe? Is no warning to be taken by the ungodly? Is no lesson to be impressed upon the careless, by the preacher of God's Word? Yes, surely; a lesson both of gratitude and awe : of gratitude, in the reflexion, that we, who like them that have perished, are sinners before God, and perhaps greater sinners than they were, are yet spared, to consider, and repent, and turn to the Lord; of awe, in the apprehension, that even now we may have passed by our last opportunity, and that the next day or hour may be too late. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

While guarding against a presumptuous interpretation of those sudden and awful calamities, which stand forth in fearful prominence from the ordinary course of events, I would not persuade you to pass them by without notice; nor to stop your ears to the voice of solemn warning. Lo, God hath spoken in his holiness. He speaks, to the attentive ear of his pious children, in all the incidents of life; in all the phenomena of the

9 Job iv. 7.

natural, and the moral world. He speaks to them, in the sunlight and the gentle breeze; in the glare of the lightning and the raging of the hurricane; in the greenness of the field and forest; in the nakedness of the rock and the howling desert; in the murmuring of the rivulet, and the majestic tumult of the troubled ocean. In all these, and in ten thousand audible voices he speaks; and there is not an hour in the day, nor a spot in the universe, wherein the ears of his servants fail to hear him. But sometimes he speaks, as he has now spoken, with an appalling loudness; and the sinner and the careless one are startled at that unwonted sound, and for a moment say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.

Supposing, what I trust may not have been the case, that any of those ill-fated of those ill-fated persons, who have suddenly perished, were unconverted, unrepentant sinners, there is no man, that believes in the being of a God, who would not shudder at the thought. Let every man, therefore, who is not fully satisfied of his own fitness to appear, at this moment, in the presence of his eternal Judge, make the case his own. O, but it is in the last degree improbable, you will say, that I should come to such a calamitous end.