summoned to make their last appearance before the judgment-seat? No pity, no compassion then, no mercy, no forgiveness there! If men are cut off by the weapons of war, in the hand of frail mortals, how must they perish under the stroke of Omnipotence, which shall reach to the soul in all her powers? when his almighty hand takes hold of, and whets the glittering sword, and swears he lives for ever, to punish his enemies for ever?

O that men were wise, and would consider their Jatter end; would throw down the weapons of their rebellion, and fight under the Captain of salvation ! then should they be happy in war and in peace; in this, and in the world to come.

MEDITATION LVII.

UNFORTUNATE RETREAT.*

St. Cas, Sept. 12, 1758.

AH, mournful day! what moving sights, what melting sounds have I seen and heard by sea and land this day! My heart bleeds for the sons of war, who boldly shed their blood. For though their scanty number was overpowered by the enemy, who poured in fresh supplies, yet their courage was conspicuous to the last. Ah, doleful event of one fatal day! Many,

* Our forces having made a descent on the coast of France, the enemy assembled their forces, before whom our little army retreated, to re-embark but when the greater part was carried aboard the transports by the flat bottomed boats, the enemy came down, and killed and made prisoners, about 1400. The action lasted about two hours, the frigates and bomb-ketches assisted the land-forces also.

gay and cheerful in the morning, lay gasping at noon, and are clay-cold by the evening twilight! My heartstrings are pierced with pain, while I remember the anguish of their last moments: they fall, but none to lift them up; they groan, but no kindly sympathiser; they die, and there is no tender-hearted mourner, none to deplore them. The little army is broken by superior numbers, and take to flight; but whither can they fly? A victorious enemy is before, rocks on every side, and a raging sea behind; some even adventure into the water, and are shot while wading for life, or perish in the waves!

How vain the confidence of man! how empty the boast of invincible courage! Let men remember that God gives the victory, and that at his frown heroes fall, and armies fly.

Methinks I see the yet more awful, universal, and conclusive day, when the heavens shall open in tremendous thunders, when the dreadful trumpet, withr louder sounds than ever echoed from the martial plains, shall raise the sleeping dust, and the tremendous Judge descend in flaming vengeance on his fiery throne; before whom the nations shall be assembled, and by whom the final sentence passed. This is the decision that shall concern the victors and the vanquished: The survivors and the slain; sovereigns and their subjects; yea, the whole world and me.

MEDITATION LVIII.

THE NATURAL MAN INSENSIBLE OF MERCY.

Portsmouth Harbour, November 1, 1758.

DID men look but a little towards God, and into themselves, it would be their wisdom; but true wisdom can never shine where saving grace does not dwell. There are some men saved from dangers, the relation of which must astonish. They are standing monuments of singular mercy, when numbers were dropping down around them, when instruments of death were rattling thick about them, like the hailfrom the thunder-cloud, and bullets falling like drops of rain, and yet they preserved safe among the gasping crowd. And there are others who have still a more narrow escape, while the bullet breaks a bone to them, which might have cut the thread of their life; wounds an extremity, which might have pierced the heart and dislodged the soul. For a month or six weeks they have a kindly remembrance of their singular preservation and heaven's peculiar mercy. But, O chilling thought! how soon do these very persons forget their great deliverer, shew not the least gratitude to God, but return to sin, and proceed from evil to worse! Had any person been a mean of their preservation, they had displayed so much of the gentleman as never to forget it but it was God and they display so much of the sinner, the abandoned sinner, as never to remember it, never to acknowledge it! They pursue their sinful practises, as if their life had at first bcen given, and preserved when in danger, for no other purpose. These men are the enemies of God; they have been hungry and he has given them bread to cat;

they have been thirsty and he has given them water to drink; they have been in disease, and he has recovered them; in danger, and he has preserved them; therefore, if they continue still his enemies, he will heap coals of fire on their head, while his kindness shall be renowned for ever. Where mercies have no effect, judgments shall without fail have most terrible effect at last. Since I am a child of many mercies, may gratitude write them, in indelible characters, on the table of my heart!

MEDITATION LIX.

THE WORD OF GOD IRRESISTIBLE.

Νου. 3, 1758.

O HOW glorious and irresistible is the word of grace, when it comes accompanied with divine power! a word that turns a sinner from his wickedness to God. Fire and sword cannot convert; war and shipwreck cannot reclaim; dangers and deliverance cannot re-form; mercies and judgments cannot change the man; but one verse in the holy scriptures, a sentence or paragraph in a religious treatise, or an expression in a sermon, backed with the divine blessing, and sent home by the Spirit of God, can prick to the very heart, overpower the whole soul, and open his eyes. towards God, himself, and eternity; towards God, to see his holiness and indignation against sin; towards himself, to see his desperate and deplorable state in such a gulph of impurity and raging enmity against God; towards eternity, to see his vast concerns and interests there, and that they are of another kind than

he dreamed of. Once he thought of nothing but assemblies, balls, and the theatre; of revellings and parties of pleasure; of knowing and being known.; of posts, preferment, and commissions from his prince; of grand appearance, noble equipage, splendid retinue, and high-sounding titles. But now he sees that judgment awaits all his actions, eternity treads on the heels of time, and that there is a world to come. These things cast out the vain and trifling phantoms that engrossed all his attention before, and give him just and proper ideas of every thing around. And this great and wonderful change, which makes him account every thing loss, dung and dross, in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ and the unseen world, is effected by a very word, that the excellency of the power may be seen to be of God; while others hear thousands of such words, and continue in impenitency.

Though a man were thrown into hell, and saw and suffered all the torments of the damned, for years and ages, and brought up again, to the land of the living, to the place of hope, yet all would be to no purpose, for without the blessing of the Most High, on the means of grace, he would not accept of salvation, nor receive the Saviour by believing on his name; and this is evident in those who have a foretaste of the terrors of hell, by the horrors of an awakened conscience, which, instead of bringing them nearer to, drives. them farther from God, and plunges them into thet remendous deeps of despair.

Though the words of peace may be more glorious from mount Zion to those that have heard the threatenings of mount Sinai, and though the thunderings of the law may precede to prepare his way; yet still God comes to a soul in the still small voice of the gospel.